I honestly can’t remember exactly when I set this blog up - there was a spell on Wordpress before moving to my own domain and it definitely happened some time around 2006/07 - but I can remember why I did it. I’d started working at a big venue with multiple bars within the site and it was the first time I’d had any kind of formal training on cocktails which led me to low-key geeking out about that part of the job. After a few months (and a few changes of staff and managers) I hit a point where there weren’t that many people at work who’d be interested in talking to me about drinks, so I started the blog as a place where I could talk about the things I found interesting.

My gift for understatement tells me it’s been pretty quiet of late - since 2013, I’ve been working for a company where cocktails are a core part of what we do so that engagement with drinks hasn’t really been lacking in my professional day-to-day, and so I’ve felt less of a need to devote lots of my free time to it.

But, given the coronavirus lockdown, I now have a lot more free time and a lot less work time so I’m bringing back an old…fav? A thing we used to do at any rate - a cocktail recipe, every week until either I run out of them or we all get to leave our houses again.

Stay safe folks.

J
Edinburgh, April 2020

This is not new news, but coffee is a whole thing. It’s also a whole thing when it comes to cocktails - there’s a good chance that an Espresso Martini will be high up on the list of most-requested drinks in any bar (y‘know, back in the day when people could go to bars and request drinks) and there are a few notable recipes that call for coffee or a coffee liqueur (your Irish Coffees, your White or Black Russian, whatever the fuck this is *) - but I always feel like the known coffee cocktails tend towards a certain kind of feel. They’re usually sweet, and they’re almost always aromatic in nature (that’s to say the recipe doesn’t call for a sour element of some, even if they’re not aromatic in the way David Embury might recognise).

I don’t know if it’s all that surprising, being honest. Coffee largely fits into our lives in two specific occasions - it’s the morning pick-me-up or it comes beside your dessert when you’re dining out. ** Given that drinking alcohol in the morning hours is still largely frowned upon in western culture, the context of coffee relating to dessert is well-established so it strikes me as mostly logical that a lot of coffee cocktails aim to fit that niche.

But if there’s one thing for which food and drink people can be relied on, it’s to challenge convention and the past few years have seen increasingly interesting uses of coffee in drinks. One of the key drinks for me was the popularity a few years ago of the Espresso and Tonic serve - it’s coffee in a brand new context and certainly had its moment as Instagram’s favourite drink for an entire minute - and that was something I had in my mind when we refreshed the cocktail menu at the Last Word a couple of years ago.

* I jest, we know what the fuck that is - it’s what happens if you throw a bunch of liqueurs at a Black Russian and put a meringue on top of it for some reason?

** Obviously, this is a gross generalisation but who comes to a blog for nuance in 2020.

Panama Swizzle

45 ml / 1.5 oz aged rum (I used Ron Abuelo 7yo)

10 ml / 0.33 oz coffee liqueur (I used Cross Brew)

10 ml / 0.33 oz falernum

1 bar spoon sugar syrup

3 drops Bittermens Xococatl mole bitters

15 ml / 0.5 oz lime juice

Pour all ingredients into a sling glass.

Half fill the glass with crushed ice and, using a bar spoon, mix thoroughly.

Fill the glass with crushed ice, and garnish with a mint sprig and a dehydrated lime wheel.

The obvious departure from the norm is the inclusion of a straight-ahead souring agent (lime juice in this case) and, because we don’t generally have a lot of experience of coffee as a flavour in that context, some of the other ingredient choices are there to bridge the gaps between those two elements. Rum, for example, pretty much always works with lime and darker styles often play well with coffee.

The recipe isn’t particularly ground-breaking - it’s the kind of thing you’d probably come up with tooling around with tiki formulas - but I like that it gives the chance to experience a familiar flavour in a new way and I think that, a lot of the time, is kind of the point when we do anything with cocktails.

PSA

The company I work for operates three cocktail bars in Edinburgh and, right now, they’re closed in line with government advice. The reasons why are clear but it’s an incredibly tough time for the hospitality industry because a lot of people can’t do the thing they’re good at. It’s bad for bar owners and it’s bad for bartenders.

We’re lucky that we have a online shop selling spirits, liqueurs, and bottled cocktails (with free UK shipping on orders above £20 - I’m sorry to say that I don’t think we can currently ship outside of the UK) and any sales we can make through that help us while the bars are closed. If anyone reading this needs some delicious things to drink will social distancing themselves, I’d be grateful if you’d check out mothershipscotland.com/