My own journey with coffee liquor began at such a tender age really. I was 19 and a weekend bartender. It was the 90’s and everyone line danced to Cotton Eye Joe wearing high waisted jeans and snug fitting crop tops.
Yeah, the good old 90’s. Checkers Bar in my home town of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories had lines of people waiting to get in every weekend. It wasn’t the classiest of places, but it was always packed with familiar faces. I made a whole lot of B-52’s, the classic shooter comprised of Kahlua, Baileys, and Grand Marnier.
I started to develop slick pouring skills, lining up the glasses and pouring the ingredients in a fast steady stream. In my mind I was cool like Tom Cruise in Cocktail. In reality I was an inexperienced bartender working in a grungy bar but I was having fun regardless.
Many years later high rise jeans are “retro” and back in fashion and we still enjoy a bit of Kahlua but in our coffee. Sadly, we have noticed that the Kahlua of today is not the same product that we enjoyed back in the 90’s. What happened? Well the little fish was swallowed by a much bigger fish that cared less about quality and more about profit. We all know how that story goes. The more expensive “Kahlua Premium” still uses high quality coffee beans but the formula and flavour is not the same. The standard Kahlua shares the same name but that’s about it!
Our homemade coffee liquor was worth the month long wait. Christmas and spiked coffees ~ YAY!Making your own version of Premium Coffee Liqueur is very easy and completely worth the effort. The flavours are amazing and you control the quality of ingredients.
By crafting it yourself you have the opportunity to experiment with coffee beans and rum varieties to refine and develop your own amazing almost famous coffee liqueur. Everyone you know will thank you for it.
It takes four weeks for the coffee beans to infuse with the rum but sneaking early tastes is not without pleasure.
The Secret the the perfect coffee liqueur is in the Ingredients!
When we decided to start making our own Coffee Liqueur I looked up recipes and none of them fit. I started doing some research and found what I was looking for on The Kahlua corporate page “The history of Kahlua” where they share details on some of the ingredients that once made this product wonderful. The three key ingredients:
1. High quality coffee beans
2. Sugar cane juice or cane sugar
3. Decent quality Rum
The better the quality of your ingredients the better the result. This does not mean you need to pick up top shelf rum but make sure that you enjoy the flavours of that rum.
If you like this recipe you might also like our recipe for How To Make Flavoured Sugar (With Recipes) or How To Make Rosehip & Juniper Berry Syrup or maybe you’d like to try your hand at making a lovely (and potent) Carrot wine.
Place the cane sugar in a pan and add a small amount of rum, on very low heat dissolve the sugar into a syrup. Fill your glass jar with the coffee, orange zest, cinnamon stick, cocoa nibs, vanilla bean (all of the ingredients except rum and sugar syrup). If you don't have big enough jars you can split the ingredients evenly between two smaller jars. When the sugar syrup has cooled pour it into the jar. Pour in the dark rum, and then top up with the light rum. Label your jar with the date, stick the lid on and let the mixture sit in a cool, dark place for a month. Shake or stir the mixture at least 3 times per week. Taste test once in a while and when you are happy with the flavors, strain the mixture through cheesecloth or a fine mesh strainer into a clean jar. Enjoy! Special note: Feel free to experiment with quantities or double up the recipe. The beauty in this recipe is the ability to refine and adjust the ingredients to suite your own personal taste. 
Ingredients
Instructions
