First of all, I’m not a bartender and not a barista. But I’m a coffee & tea specialist that loves indulging into flavors and try-tasting different recipes. I like to immerse myself in various tasting experiences for my palate. I’m an epicurean who loves experimenting with ingredients.
Sounds like you? Read on!
What is a coffee mocktail?
As the name already states, it contains coffee. Strictly speaking it even contains brewed coffee, that is filter coffee. But oftentimes an Espresso Mocktail, using espresso instead of filter coffee, is referred to as a coffee mocktail, too.
Now you can add hot coffee to a coffee mocktail, which is a great idea for fall or winter inspired coffee mocktails. Or you can add cold brew or cold extracted coffee, that is using a cold brew coffee maker.
The next step would be using Nitro Cold Brew Coffee, that uses nitrogen to add a foamy and frothy texture to your cold brew, such as it’s being done with Guinness Beer. If you wanna learn more about Nitro Cold Brew Coffee read this article on my Blog.
What turns a cold brew coffee into a coffee mocktail?
It’s all the other ingredients you’re using, juices, syrups, lemonades, etc.
BUT, apart from a cocktail, coffee mocktails don’t contain any alcohol. There’s zero booze in them. Which makes it a fun, refreshing yet caffeinated beverage for summer parties, coffee dates and more.
Before we dive deeper into how to create your first coffee mocktail, let’s have a look at Food Pairings or flavor pairings, because these are the core of any well balanced coffee mocktail.
Food Pairing as the source of inspiration for your coffee mocktail
The key here is to either complement flavors, that is all of the ingredients you’ll use have flavors that are complementing each other, enhancing or highlighting certain flavor notes in some of the ingredients, e.g. a fruity (let’s say tropical fruits) might go well with a spicy ginger beer.
The other possibility is to choose a combination that is balancing your flavors, e.g. you chose a very sweet caramelly coffee, pick a flavor in a juice or syrup or lemonade that is balancing this flavor, e.g. pineapple, pear where it contributes to the overall flavor. Or a coffee that has lots of notes of cocoa. You can pair that with raspberry juice or peach juice. As always, preferably fresh.
This method comes from Food Pairing, which is often used in Restaurants and Bars to create dishes and cocktails or mocktails. My bible for that is The Flavor Thesaurus by Niki Segnit, which lets you search different ingredients and then gives potential flavor matchings.
Another great resource is The Food Pairing Instagram account. I just recently bought their book The Art & Science of Foodpairing, too. For professionals, like Chefs, they also have an online platform, where you can play around with different food pairings.
Find the perfect coffee for your coffee mocktail
I’d suggest starting by using your favorite coffee brand, but choose a single origin coffee instead of a blend. It just has more distinct flavors, e.g. fruity, floral, chocolaty, nutty, etc. Next, you’d wanna make a cold brew with that coffee and do a taste test. Ask yourself questions such as, which flavor notes come out, what do you like about it and what not?
Now for experimenting with your coffee mocktail recipe, make a bigger batch of the cold brew coffee you decided to use. Usually the ratio for a cold brew is 70 grams of coffee for 1 liter of water. This gives you a stronger concentration. If you go lower with the ratio, let’s say 30 grams of coffee per 500ml of water, your cold brew will be a tad lighter. Keep that in mind when mixing your ingredients. You still wanna taste your coffee in the coffee mocktail.
If you’re usually not a big fan of cold brew and you’re afraid this much goes bad, start by making half the batch, that is use 40 grams of coffee with 500ml of water. When using the 30 grams to 500ml ratio, you’ll end up with around 400ml coffee after filtration.
I usually use a paper filter that has been rinsed before using. But you can totally use a cold brew coffee maker, if you happen to have one.
Pick a juice for your coffee mocktail
Photo by freestocks on Unsplash
I always opt for fresh juice from a real fruit, not from a bottled/prepackaged product. But if you simply can’t avoid using preserved juice, choose a brand from a local orchard and preferably organic.
Choose the juice depending on what kind of coffee you use. Check the sweetness of your juice. Some can be very syrupy already, which tells you to be very careful in adding syrups (simple syrup, infused simple syrups, maple syrups or even infused maple syrups), if any at all.
If your choice leans towards the sweeter side already, you may wanna add a tangy/tart/sour juice as well, such as lime or lemon juice or grapefruit juice. Lime is always a classic ingredient in cocktails and mocktails, so start by adding that.
You can totally be finished with these ingredients making your coffee mocktail. Especially, if you’ve made a cold brew concentrate.
How to build your coffee mocktail
Usually there’s two ways of preparing a coffee cocktail as well as a coffee mocktail, by shaking it (on ice) or stirring it with a (bar) spoon.
Another great option, especially for summery coffee mocktails is to start by shaking your ingredients on ice, then top up your glass with seltzer, soda, or other lemonades, ginger beer/brew, Tonic Water.
Pay attention to the sugar content in any of those. They may add more sweetness to your coffee mocktail, so start with a small amount.
Using lemonade or not also decides what type of glass you’re using. If you only shake your ingredients, you can pick a smaller glass, such as a Coupette, champagne bowl or martini glass. If you top up with lemonade or any other sparkling beverage go for a gin glass or a whisky tumbler.
How to find the perfect blend of ingredients for your coffee mocktail
If you happen to have a Cocktail Shaker/bar equipment use that. If not, use a one pint mason jar for shaking.
Start by using 100ml (10cl in bar language) of your cold brew to the shaker/jar, then add ice cubes (3-4, depending on the size, you don’t wanna dilute your coffee mocktail).
Then add about 1 tbsp of the juice you’re using, 1 tsp of the lime, lemon or grapefruit juice (if using), start by adding ½ tsp of your syrup (if using).
Shake well, but not for too long otherwise you’ll dilute your coffee mocktail.
Strain through a sieve into your glass.
If you’re adding the lemonade/seltzer or ginger beer/brew, etc. add that. Start with 50ml (5cl).
Taste!
Is it too sweet? Which flavor is overpowering? Which one can’t you taste at all? Is it too watery, too flat?
If you wanna add ice cubes to your final coffee mocktail, you might wanna consider increasing the amount of your ingredients, that is add 1 ½ tbsp of your juice or even 2 tbsp, 1 ½ tsp of the lime or lemon or grapefruit juice.
Plus, the warmer your coffee mocktail gets, even if you’ve shaken it on ice, the sweeter it gets, too – the summer heat sure does it’s thing to our beverages, doesn’t it? -, especially if you’ve added lemonade. Take this into consideration as well.
Recipe: Mel’s Berry Lime Coffee Mocktail
This is exactly the method how I came up with my berry lime coffee mocktail. Well, not quite. I’ve come across a very special ingredient that I was meaning to use in a coffee mocktail for a little while already, an infused maple syrup, made by a sugar house here in Vermont.
Being in Vermont has me choose a wide variety of the classic as well as infused maple syrups. There’s vanilla infused ones, there’s ginger root infused ones, some even infuse it with coffee!
Then there’s maple syrups using local herbs and plants, such as spruce or birch. And, then there’s an infused maple syrup using sumac berries that grow here in Vermont, too.
Wait what?!?
Exactly! That’s what I thought, too! Hence my decision, I need to play around with that!
So I started off with that sumac berry infused maple syrup, which has notes of lemon zest, raspberry, black tea.
I first was looking into using a coffee from a local coffee roaster based in Burlington, VT that had rather chocolaty notes. But before even being able to start experimenting with it, I ran out of that coffee and purchased a new one. And I’m glad I waited.
The coffee that I ended up using, a natural processed one, had notes of strawberry, black tea, and tropical.
Regarding the latter, when reading something like that, I’m always like, what the heck do you mean by that?
Tropical can mean anything and nothing! There’s a wide range of tropical fruits out there, such as pineapple, mango, papaya, depending on where you are in the world that falls in that category. All very very different!
Anyway, I now had this coffee and the sumac berry infused maple syrup I wanted to use.
Now what?
I knew I had strawberries in the freezer that needed using. Okay, Strawberry Juice. But only the juice, not the flesh, I didn’t wanna end up with a Smoothie or Slushy.
Let’s have a look at our flavors again:
Coffee: Strawberry, black tea, tropical (Brio’s website says peach here)
Sumac berry infused maple syrup: lemon zest, raspberry, black tea. Not uber sweet.
Strawberry juice (from the frozen strawberries). Which was very syrupy and sweet to start with.
This sounds quite interesting already, doesn’t it?
I knew that strawberries and lime are a great combo for cocktails and mocktails already, so I opted for lime juice.
My first try was very weak and flat, it even tasted watery.
I had used 100ml coffee, 1 tbsp strawberry juice, 1 tsp lime juice and ½ tsp sumac berry infused maple syrup.
Shaken on ice (I think 4-5 ice cubes), strained.
I kept going with it anyway and added the ginger brew, which was very sweet to begin with. But I didn’t have another one on hand, so I stuck with that. I added about 70ml or a little more. It might’ve been even another 100ml, the same amount as the cold brew.
When experimenting with ingredients and playing around with them, I usually am not really measuring how much I use. A pinch of this, a dash of that, maybe a tablespoon or teaspoon here and there. Which makes it hard to jot down my recipes. But I’m trying.
This amount of ginger brew (70-100ml) turned the whole coffee mocktail into something spicy-sweet. The ginger brew just was too overpowering, the other ingredients not cutting through at all. Let alone tasting the coffee in there…
Since I had another 300ml of cold brew to play with, I made another coffee mocktail using another 100ml of cold brew, but added a dash more of everything and one ice cube less.
Tasting that after shaking on ice was like Boom! that it’s. I could taste everything in one sip. The coffee, the berries, some tanginess, sweetness, fruitiness.
Now topped up with the sparkles, that is the ginger brew (I used less this time, about 50ml) and 2 smallish ice cubes put in the glass turned this berry lime coffee mocktail into a refreshing fruity yet not too sweet punch in my mouth. I loved it!
If you wanna give it a GO, here’s the recipe for you:
- 100ml cold brew (Brio), purchased at a local Food Co-op
- 1 ½ tbsp strawberry juice (from frozen strawberries)
- 1 ½ tsp freshly squeezed lime juice
- 1 ½ tsp sumac berry infused maple syrup by Baird Farm (the bottle got gifted to me in order for me to play around with it)
Shaken on ice, then strained into a whisky tumbler.
Topped up with 50ml of ginger brew/beer. Mine was a brand from Maine, which was rather on the sweeter side. If you happen to have a more spicier one, adjust the measurements of your ingredients and/or use less of your ginger brew. Garnish with a fresh strawberry or even a slice of your lime. Enjoy!
Ready for more coffee mocktails? Head over here!