The Cold Brew Martini Solution

The espresso martini only has a few ingredients, and one of them is right there in the name. The drink is traditionally made with a shot of, what else, fresh espresso. If you want to make it that way, we’ve got you covered.

But what to do if you don’t have an espresso machine at home? It’s not like we all have a Barista Pro sitting on our countertops. I know I don’t! Fortunately, there’s an easy solution to this: use cold brew concentrate to make a decaf cold brew martini!

For decaf drinkers, we also need a great decaf cold brew concentrate. Fortunately, we have plenty of great options for this. For starters, you can always make your own decaf cold brew concentrate. But what if you don’t have the time to cold brew a batch of coffee overnight? What if you just don’t want to? Enter The Daydreamer, Explorer Cold Brew’s delicious decaf cold brew concentrate.

This concentrate is a boon for decaf drinkers. It’s low-acid, sweet taste works beautifully in an espresso martini. Its smooth, creamy texture allows it to sub in wonderfully for a frothy shot of espresso. We recommend this concentrate, but feel free to go with one of your own choosing as well. Now let’s get to work making our cocktail!

Why Use Cold Brew Concentrate for your Cold Brew Martini?

Espresso martinis use espresso to give the drink its characteristic punch. Espresso’s frothy texture also helps the drink form its thick head of foam. That said, hot espresso poses problems of its own.

For one, hot espresso can be a tricky beast in a cold drink. The hot liquid will melt ice more quickly than room-temperature ingredients will. Making a great cocktail is all about finding the right level of dilution. If your ice melts too little, it won’t dilute the drink enough. You’ll be faced with a harsh, overly alcoholic drink. Melt the ice too much, however, and you’ll over-dilute the drink. You’ll be left with a watered down, bland final product.

Using cold brew concentrate to make your cold brew martini easily sidesteps this issue. It’s already chilled, which means it performs just like a standard cocktail ingredient. No need to worry about melting too much ice. You can also add more cold brew concentrate to a drink than you can espresso. If you add more than an ounce of espresso to your cocktail shaker, you run the risk over dilution. On the other hand, you can add as much concentrate as you’d like. This lets you make a drink with a more pronounced coffee flavor.

Using concentrate also makes the drink quicker and easier to prepare. Rather than pulling a quality shot of espresso, just uncork your concentrate and measure it into the shaker.

Concentrate outperforms regular cold brew for several reasons. For one, standard cold brew has more liquid than concentrate does. What does more liquid give us? Say it with me: “more dilution!” Concentrate is also thicker, which gives the drink a silkier texture.

The only thing that cold brew concentrate can’t do is provide the froth of a shot of espresso. Fortunately, a little old fashioned elbow grease will solve this problem.

Choose Your Liquor & Shake it Up

This part is simple. For the vodka, choose a solid vodka with a clean flavor. Something like Titos or Ketel One will perform well. Just don’t use bad vodka. One bad spirit can ruin any drink, so stick to something solid. There’s no need to break the bank, just make sure it’s at minimum decent.

As for your coffee liquor, Kahlua is the classic choice. It’s important to remember that Kahlua does contain caffeine, however. A standard 1.5 ounce pour of Kahlua contains 5 mgs of caffeine. Our recipe calls for ¾ ounces of coffee liqueur, so if you use Kahlua, you’ll be consuming 2.5 mgs of caffeine. This is a pretty negligible amount (a standard cup of coffee contains 80 – 100 mgs of caffeine.) Still, if you’re very caffeine sensitive this might not be worth the risk. Ricardo’s makes a completely caffeine-free coffee liquor that you can use.

The only thing left to do is shake the drink up. Because we don’t have the froth of an espresso shot, we need to strongly shake this drink. I call for at least 30 seconds of vigorous shaking. If you haven’t formed a thick head of foam at this point, try shaking for another ten seconds. Trust me, the upper arm workout will only make the drink taste sweeter.

Once your drink is ready, strain it into a chilled coupe glass, garnish with a few coffee beans if you’d like, and enjoy!