A homemade coffee liqueur to make and gift this season

This year, a homemade holiday gift might be even more welcome than usual, and you may have a bit more time to make it a reality. Look no further. We’ve got a special boozy drink you can make yourself, package up, and gift to a coffee lover in your life.

Bob Fish, CEO of Biggby Coffee, showed us how to make a delicious coffee liqueur from scratch. He’s planning on giving bottles of this potent elixir to family and friends this year, personally packaged up with a bag of fresh coffee.

Fish spent a lot of time developing this recipe, getting all the ingredients just right, in order to have it properly duplicate – and possibly better – the popular liqueur Kahlúa. You can also find something similar, and a bit cheaper, at the store called Kamora. Fish made batch after batch of this, figuring out not just the right ingredients, but also the timing and ratios to create the perfect batch of booze.

He started with the best Biggby coffee for the job. While the Biggby Best blend made a very tasty batch, Fish found that the Living Hope blend was even better. The coffee is “roasted a little bit darker than the Biggby Best,” Fish explained. “While the Biggby Best is a little floral, and a little citrusy, and that’s not bad. But the Living Hope is a little more earthy in its application, more berry-like. And when all these ingredients get married together, this one just does a little bit of a better job.”

In addition to working perfectly in this recipe, the Living Hope coffee is purchased by Biggby directly from the farmers who grow it in Zambia. The farm grows the coffee to support their mission to provide shelter, food, education and hope to orphaned children in Zambia. Since Biggby has started supporting their efforts, the organization has added 70 new beds to their orphanage.

The recipe calls for two different parts, which then get married together to create the final product. There is a coffee simple syrup, and an infused rum to make, both simple to do, but time is needed in order to achieve the full flavor this liqueur deserves. Fish recommends using classic canning jars with lids to hold the two liquids while they age, and then transferring the final product into a decorative bottle for gifting.

Start off by making the infused rum by adding a rather incredible variety of ingredients to steep and stew over the course of a few days. All of the ingredients for the rum are “very complimentary to coffee,” Fish explained. Then, make the coffee simple syrup, which Fish has down to a science. His technique of wetting the coffee grounds first, and then adding them to the simple syrup to infuse ensures that the coffee doesn’t suffer from over extraction, which can create an unwelcome bitterness. Be sure to filter the coffee syrup twice, with the second time sending it through something like cheesecloth or a paper coffee filter in order to achieve a truly smooth product.

The two liquids then get mixed together in a 50/50 ratio, and should…