There’s more to the London Coffee Festival than cocktails and candies, we promise, but there are just so many whiz-bang perfect executions of coffee-infused fun we can’t help but write about them. The folks at Caravan Coffee Roasters in London made waves last weekend with their Negroni-inspired cocktail, eschewing vermouth for a washed Ethiopian coffee syrup.
Wholesale Account Manager Simon Lewthwaite created the recipe for the festival, and Caravan produced enough of the stuff to provide 1,800 30ml samples of the cocktail-on-tap (or 54 liters, but 1,800 samples sounds more impressive). It took over twenty-five bottles of Campari, gin, and twenty-one liters of coffee syrup.
We asked Lewthwaite what people have thought of the drink and he told us there’s been a lot of enthusiasm for the cocktail. Because of the nature of batch-cocktail-on-tap, the coffee flavor had become more pronounced over the four days of the fest. On the first day the drink was quite sweet but by day four, the drink evolved into a more coffee-forward experience.
Not in London? Make it at home!
To make the coffee syrup, brew a double-strength batch of a floral washed Ethiopian coffee. If you want to faithfully replicate the London Coffee Festival experience, find a bag of Caravan’s Ethiopia Biftu Gudina (available online soon). Lewthwaite recommends using 65 grams of coffee, 250 grams of sugar, and 500 grams of water. Fair warning: This will give you a lot of syrup to work with, but it’ll last for a week in the fridge. Throw a party and serve this drink to really get your party guests buzzing!
For the drink itself, use the traditional equal parts Negroni ratio, with about 35ml of Campari, gin, and coffee syrup. At the festival, Caravan used Oliver Cromwell London Dry Gin, but if you can’t find this import you’d be safe with another dry gin like Tanqueray, which is pretty easy to find anywhere in the world. If you’re in America and want to put a Yankee twist on the whole thing, seek out gins from Ransom, an Oregon distillery that makes brilliant spirits (and wines).
Garnish with an orange wedge and chug-a-lug, Brewdy! Chug-a-lug.
Zachary Carlsen is a Sprudge.com co-founder and senior editor. Read more ZC on Sprudge.
