Coffee gives booze extra buzz

From the May/June 2011 issue

With Stumptown Coffee Roasters making national news and a slew of smaller microroasters keeping locals buzzing, Portland is known for its devotion to artisan coffee. Gaining fame is the city’s cadre of craft distillers, bottling everything from whiskeys and gins to vodkas—and now, coffee liqueurs.

Cross-pollination, as they say, happens, so it’s no surprise that Portland’s drink-meisters were inspired, perhaps one hung-over morning, to blend their booze with coffee beans. If the words “coffee liqueur” conjure that thick, brown, syrupy stuff served with a float of cream, six of Portland’s premier craft distillers have a surprise for you.

Deco Distilling
Longtime coffee enthusiasts Lenny Gotter and Bill Adams at Deco Distilling—Adams worked for years as a barista in various coffee shops—used Arabica beans roasted in Portland to create a smooth, rich coffee-flavored rum with just a hint of sweetness. Don’t just take our word for it: it just won a Silver Medal at the 2011 San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

www.decodistilling.com

Edgefield Distillery
Oregon’s McMenamins has been making a coffee liqueur from their Edgefield Distillery since 2005, using coffee from their own McMenamins Coffee Roastery. Distiller Clark McCool says that 70 pounds of house-roasted Ethiopian Sidamo coffee goes into each batch. The coffee is cold-steeped, strained, and blended with grain spirits that have been infused with vanilla beans and sweetened with natural sugar. McCool likes the fruity aroma and medium body of the Sidamo coffee, and the silky texture imparted by the sugar.

www.mcmenamins.com

Highball Distillery
A believer in supprting sustainable and organic farms, Highball Distillery’s owner Michael Heavener produced his Vanilla Espresso Vodka with the same organic soft-white wheat grown in the Pacific Northwest as he uses in his flagship spirit, Elemental Vodka. Infused with organically grown vanilla and espresso beans, it’s delicious consumed straight
or as an aromatherapeutic addition to cocktails.
www.highballdistillery.com

House Spirits Distillery
The coffee liqueur made by House Spirits Distillery started as a neighborly series of conversations between owner Christian Krogstadt and Jeremy Adams of Cellar Door Coffee Roasters, a small café and roastery just blocks away from the distillery. Originally released in 2010, the liqueur combines double-distilled, un-aged rum made from organic Hawaiian turbinado sugar with cold-brewed organic Guatemalan coffee roasted by Cellar Door, plus cinnamon and orange peel. The apothecary-style bottles and labels and red wax seal give it a classic, handcrafted look.
www.housespirits.com

Bendistillery
Not quite in Portland, but in reach of the aroma of a good brew, Bendistillery in Bend, Oregon, offers their Cofia Hazelnut Espresso Vodka. A Best of Show and Platinum Medal winner at the World Beverage Competition in 2006, Cofia is appropriately rich brown in color and full of coffee and nut flavors. Great on its own, Cofia also proves its worth as a culinary ingredient or a mixer for making cocktails, or just add a shot to your morning cuppa for a special pick-me-up.

www.bendistillery.com

Stone Barn Brandyworks
Owners Sebastian and Erika Degens of Stone Barn Brandyworks believe in creating spirits that bring out the essential characteristics of their ingredients. Their coffee liqueur, a blend of estate-grown “Nombre de Dios” El Salvadoran coffee and a Yemeni coffee from the Sanani region, both roasted by Stone Barn’s neighbor, Marigold Coffee, fits this belief to a T. Infusing a house-distilled Pinot Noir brandy and pear/apple spirit with the fresh-roasted beans, it offers complex hints
of vanilla, cinnamon, chocolate, citrus, and tobacco.
www.stonebarnbrandyworks.com

New Deal Distillery
New Deal Distillery created a series of coffee liqueurs in collaboration with several small coffee roasters in the Central Eastside Industrial neighborhood that the distillery calls home. Each liqueur features a different coffee origin, roast, and roaster technique, and is brewed and blended with batch-distilled spirits, then sweetened with
cane juice and agave nectar.
www.newdealdistillery.com

—Kathleen Bauer