Clear Espresso Martini

This post contains affiliate links: As an Amazon Associate I may earn a commission from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you.

This Clear Espresso Martini is like a magic trick, it tastes just like the original Espresso Martini, but looks like a glass of water.

This clear version of the Espresso Martini only uses 3 ingredients. Simple syrup, A coffee-infused rum, and clarified and colorless coffee.

Clear Espresso Martini using Clarified Coffee

You’ll need the following equipment:

Ingredients:

White Rum
Medium Roast Espresso Beans
Simple Syrup
Clarified Coffee

I’m going to make a coffee-infused rum first. The reason I’m making this is because any clarification process strips away a lot of the flavor compounds of whatever it is you’re clarifying. Some bitter notes or any of the more volatile flavor compounds. So to compensate for this, we’ll infuse our rum with some coffee. For this coffee-infused rum I’m going to do a rapid infusing in my ISI whipper. If you don’t have an ISI you can do a long infusion simply by soaking coffee beans in rum for 24 hours and straining. Im choosing rum over vodka for this, because I don’t really think vodka lends much to the cocktail, rum is a far better pairing with coffee. The sweetness of rum really lends itself well to this cocktail.

When choosing your espresso beans, you will want something with a medium roast. I think dark roast can taste a bit ashy, and a light roast will impart more of the sour fruity notes. The medium roast offers a nice chocolatey, malty flavor. You also don’t want to use the freshest roasted coffee beans either. I think there’s a myth that the freshly roasted beans taste better. Its actually not true, after being roasted the beans need time to de- grass before the flavor really settles. The sweet spot is about 2 weeks after roasting.For this rapid infusion, I’m going to add 4oz of rum to my ISI canister. Then I’m going to add 1 tablespoon of Irving Farms Blackstrap espresso beans. Screw on the top and add your N2 cartridge and give it a quick shake. Then simply squeeze the handle to let out the pressure. Strain into a container and voila. Coffee-infused rum that’s clear and ready to use.

Now, the main question - how am I going to clarify and clear-ify the espresso? Well, it was quite the endeavor. I tried espresso, cold brew, nitro cold brew, agar clarification, multiple milk clarifications, activated charcoal clarifications all of which you can find in this post, here’s a quick recap on how I clarified and removed the color from coffee: first, I ended up clarifying cold brew coffee through a milk clarification process. I gave this a few passes until all cloudiness was removed. Then, after much more experimentation, I ended up being able to remove the color using something I never would’ve thought about using before: a Brita filter. I couldn’t believe how well it worked. It took a couple of passes but sure enough, the coffee ended up running clear and still retained some flavor. Again, this took a whole lot of experimenting to finally get to this clarified coffee. Now that we have our clarified and colorless coffee, we can make our revamped and clear espresso martini.

For this clear espresso martini I’ll add 3/4 oz simple syrup to my mixing glass, followed by 1.5 oz of the clarified coffee, lastly I will add 1.5 oz of the espresso rum. I’ll add the ice and give this a stir for 30 seconds. Then I’ll simply strain into a Nick and Nora glass. A crystal clear espresso martini. I couldn’t stop looking at it after I poured it. This was a long journey to get to here and it was so nice to see it paid off. And the taste … it tasted just like an espresso martini and dare I say, much more finessed. It’s so well balanced with just the right amount of sweetness, a lovely homogenized coffee flavor from the cold brew and coffee-infused rum and it has such a rich mouthfeel from the whey in the clarification.