This was the first recipe I created using the oleo-saccharum technique—literally translated as ‘oil-sugar.’ I’ve written earlier about how sugar, through osmosis, draws the essential oils out of citrus peels. Here, though, we use the same method on used coffee pods. Yes, used.
If you don’t have an espresso machine at home, don’t worry—most coffee shops will gladly let you take their spent grounds. Usually they’re tossed at the end of a shift, or handed over to gardeners for compost. But for us, they’re perfect: during extraction, hot water passes through the coffee, leaving it moist. That moisture is exactly what we need, because sugar can only pull out the aromatic oils if the coffee isn’t dry.
Ingredients
- 200g used coffee pods
- 200g demerara sugar
- 400ml freshly brewed espresso
- 300ml tequila blanco 40%ABV (or liqueur of your choice, I can recommend rum or vodka, but feel free to go after your own tastebuds)
Equipment
- small container
- coffee filter
- espresso machine – optional
- scale
The Process
- Measure 200g used coffee and 200g demerara sugar. Mix them well, evenly
- Leave it for 8-12 hours, or overnight, it should turn into a sludgy substance
- Mix in the 400ml hot espresso, and the 300ml tequila
- Strain it through a coffee filter
Final Yield: ~700ml
ABV: ~14%
Shelf-Life: 3-4 weeks
Calculating the ABV for this one is nearly impossible, you need to measure the exact amount of the Coffee-Saccharum that you get, which at this point is a sludge. We cannot count the solid coffee grounds, because they will be filtered out, so we can only calculate the dissolved sugar. For this we will have to adapt the rule of thumb, based on sugar syrup, whether we make it 1:1, 2:1, etc, the sugar concentration will be almost always ~0.6g/ml.
300ml tequila x 40%ABV=120ml pure ethanol
200g sugar x 0.6g/ml = 120ml dissolved sugar
300ml tequila + 400ml espresso + 120ml (dissolved sugar) = 820ml (final yield)
ABV= 120 (pure ethanol) / 820 x 100 = ~14.6% ABV
Note
- The problem with the final yield is that everything depends on the filtration process. It is a huge variable, most of the times you will get much less yield, sometimes I got ~600ml, other times ~700. In my experience it all depends on how often and at what stage you change to a new filter, if you even change, the final ABV though should be in close proximity of what we calculated, because everything is mixed together before straining.
- You may add different types of sugars as well. (see at the Sugars, under the Methods tab)