Homemade kahlua....the GOOD kind!

[freemotion]

By request, here is the method I use to make kahlua using real coffee beans and not icky instant coffee.

http://www.epinions.com/review/Kahlua_Licor_de_Cafe/fddk-review-29A5-3561073F-3A0EE5F9-prod6

How to Make "Kahlua" at Home


This is a recipe for making a generic coffee liqueur in your own kitchen that will taste very, very good. It will not taste exactly like Kahlua but you will be proud of your results nonetheless.

When I made my first batch I sat some friends down and poured them each a glass of my stuff, and a glass of real Kahlua, without revealing to them which was which. They all could tell that there was a difference. About half preferred my coffee liqueur and half preferred the Kahlua.

The advantage of homemade coffee liqueur, besides the pride of doing it yourself, is cost. You will use vodka as the alcohol base, and it doesn't really matter how cheap a vodka you buy. This recipe also calls for a fresh vanilla bean, which is not cheap, but ounce for ounce your homemade liqueur should still cost you less than the commercial product.

My first batch of coffee liqueur filled a glass-stoppered decanter that sat on my counter, providing months of enjoyment before being used up. I used subsequent batches to fill recycled wine bottles, which I gave as gifts, complete with "Steve's Coffee Liqueur" labels. (Note: Although I never had any problems with storing the finished product at room temperature, to be on the safe side you might want to keep it in the refrigerator and advise any friends you give it to to do so also.)

Equipment

Saucepan
Coffee maker (see below)
2 stoppered bottles

Ingredients

Finely ground dark-roast coffee
Brown sugar
Vodka (90 to 100 proof)
Fresh vanilla bean
Glycerin (see below)

Steps

1. Place a filter in the filter basket of your coffee maker and fill it almost full of the ground coffee. In a typical coffee maker using a standard paper filter, this should be approximately 2 or 2 1/2 cups.
(Note that I'm not talking about the amount of ground coffee needed to make 2 cups of coffee to drink; I'm talking about 2 actual cups of ground coffee.) If you have any doubt about the amount of ground coffee you used to almost fill the filter, measure; you will need this information for the next step.

Note: The easiest coffee maker to use for this is the type where you pour hot water directly into the ground coffee, which sits in a cone-shaped filter, which in turn drips the brewed coffee into a pot. However, since most people now use Mr. Coffee-type electric drip coffee makers, I've written these instructions for them. Just be aware that because the filter in an electric drip maker is relatively shallow, and you're filling it, there is the potential to make a mess.*

2. Put as much water into the saucepan as the amount of coffee you used in the coffee maker. You want a one-to-one correspondence; if you used two cups of coffee you will use two cups of water. Slit the vanilla bean and place it in the water. Simmer for 15 minutes, then allow the water to cool some.

3. Fish the vanilla bean out of the water and save it. Pour the water into your coffee maker and turn it on to brew, just as you normally would. What you will be making will be an incredibly strong coffee concentrate.

4. When it's finished brewing, remove the filter basket containing the filter and wet coffee grounds and hold the filter basket over the saucepan. Immediately pour the coffee concentrate that you just made through the grounds, into the saucepan, to produce really incredibly strong concentrate.

5. The coffee concentrate should still be hot. If not you can turn on the heat under the saucepan for 20 seconds or so. Dissolve brown sugar into the hot concentrate in an amount equal to the amount of coffee you used. In the example we're using, this would mean 2 to 2 1/2 cups of sugar.

6. Allow the coffee-and-sugar concentrate to cool some, then pour into a stoppered bottle. Add vodka to the bottle in an amount equal to the amount of concentrate; again, in our example, this would be 2 to 2 1/2 cups. (Depending on the size of the bottle, you may want to make additional concentrate and add it, with the corresponding amount of vodka, to top off the bottle.)

7. Add the vanilla bean to the bottle, put the stopper in, and refrigerate for four or five days. Taste. When you can barely distinguish the taste of the vanilla, pour into a second bottle and throw away the vanilla bean.

8. Add a couple teaspoons of glycerin to your liqueur to give it body. Strictly speaking this is optional, but I personally don't like to go to all the trouble of making coffee liqueur just to have it be watery in texture. (Glycerin is cheap and it used to be available in any drug store. Nowadays if you ask for it, you're likely to be told that all they have is glycerin suppositories! THESE WON'T WORK [at least for our job]! Just keep looking.)

Your coffee liqueur is now ready to drink and enjoy. Let me know how it turns out.

Since brown sugar is just white sugar with molasses added, this is what I used. Also, I don't have a coffee maker, so I just carefully poured the water through a filter-lined funnel. I had to reheat the coffee a bit to get a good second "pressing" from it.

I skipped the glycerin, of course. Why go through all this trouble just to add garbage ingredients? Besides, you will be serving this in rich whole milk or better, straight cream!

Gets much better with a few months of aging, like most liqueurs and such.

 

[Wifezilla]

I love homemade kahlua. I have used instant coffee in the past, but fresh would be better. I have a french press so that would be no trouble at all.

 

[savingdogs]

Thank you so much! I can't wait to assemble the ingredients to make this.

 

[Henrietta23]

I have vanilla vodka. I wonder if that would taste as good until I can get a bean?