The espresso martini might be having a bit of a resurgence lately
but in Australia it never really went away.
Look, I'm not gonna lie to you. Sometimes I show you how to make drinks
that I don't really drink, but that's okay my job is to respect drinks
and to know how to make a good version of them.
But I freaking love an espresso martini. So many nights out
could kind of go one of two ways. you're like do I go home, do we go elsewhere and a
round of espresso martinis is always gonna make that decision for you.
It's a national obsession here, available everywhere from your local pub to
world-class cocktail bars.
So where did it come from and why do we love it so much?
I do have to thank my partner Fred Siggins here, you may have
seen him in our American Whiskey videos. He's probably the person that's
researched the history and the social aspects of
the espresso martini the most and we also drink plenty together,
so this episode was definitely inspired by his work.
Before I moved to Melbourne I had probably
made about three espresso martinis in my bartending career
which admittedly was only a few years old at that point but considering I'd
probably made about a thousand french martinis you can see the contrast.
I hadn't really seen them on any serious cocktail list in the UK
or Canada or the States but when I turned up here
every single bar no matter how high or low brow had a bottle of espresso in the rail.
So it must be an Australian invention right?
The espresso martini was actually quite famously invented in London in 1983.
The story goes that a never named but apparently now mega
famous model walked up to Dick Bradsell's bar and
asked for a drink that would wake her up and then **** her up.
He obliged by shaking up vodka, fresh espresso coffee liqueur and sugar syrup.
The result was a frothy bittersweet miracle which I'm very sure
got both jobs done perfectly. He initially called it the Vodka Espresso
then the Pharmaceutical Stimulant, which is actually my favorite title
but as with most drinks of that era
served in a martini glass it just couldn't escape the martini moniker,
and this is how it's now known worldwide.
Australia and the UK have strong links in the bartending community thanks to
working holiday visas which allow fairly easy travel between the two countries
for young people, thanks for that, the espresso martini made its way down under
and just as it slowly faded from popularity in its original home
it found a new spiritual one here.
Melbourne is very well known for and very proud of its coffee culture,
this was kick-started with large-scale Italian immigration after World War II
and thankfully they brought their espresso machine with them.
Cafe culture has been thriving ever since and cocktail bars really actually
grew out of that. We take our coffee seriously and by
extension we take our coffee cocktails seriously.
And of course Sydney follows everything Melbourne does
so the trend spread rapidly.
Thankfully the rest of the world seems to be giving
the espresso martini a second chance. As with so many drinks it gets a bad rap
due to overly sugary and just unbalanced versions so let's take a look
at how to make a properly balanced Espresso Martini,
Melbourne style.
So we really have to start with the headline act here and that's the coffee
it's really important. Ideally it should be made with fresh espresso
um since cocktail bars in Melbourne did really evolve from cafes and casual restaurants
pretty much every bar had a coffee machine anyway
and that made it quite easy to turn out espresso martinis which can kind of
explain why it really took hold here unlike elsewhere where it can be
unusual to have an espresso machine if your primary focus
is alcoholic drinks. In fact Fred used to run an American style bar here
called the Kodiak club which very deliberately did not have a coffee machine
to sort of stick to its American roots,
so when people ask for an espresso martini, which they did,
all the time because it's Melbourne, he would say that he would make it for them
if they brought him an espresso and a surprising number of people
would actually take him up on it and run to a neighboring bar a restaurant and
come back carrying a little cup of espresso for their martini.
It is ideal to pull to order even if it seems a bit weird to throw a hot shot of
coffee in your shaker tin because the crema on your espresso shot
translates to the really wonderful creamy head on the cocktail.
That said, at Bomba our coffee machine is downstairs in the restaurant and the
cocktail bar is on the rooftop, so logistically what we do is pull a
heap before each shift and as long as you shake nice and hard
you shouldn't really struggle getting a decent foam.
Just be aware that coffee does get more sour over time so it really
lasts a day maximum. There's also more and more good
cold brew and concentrate options on the market as
baristas sort of put their knowledge to use to try and formulate a product that
will save time and increase consistency for bartenders on
service, and it also opens up espresso martinis
to home bartenders who don't have an espresso machine to hand.
The most well known in Australia is probably Little Drippa or First Press
both great products Chameleon came up when I was looking for something similar
in the States although I haven't tried it so if you do have a better suggestion
then please let me know. And you can obviously make a cold brew yourself.
Either way the fuller the flavor of the coffee the better,
so you really want a nice dark and chocolatey roast with a good amount
of bitterness because you're looking to balance out
the sweetness of everything else. For the vodka you can definitely have a little
bit of fun lots of brands like Absolute and Skyy
have flavor vodkas you could use um obviously something like vanilla is
always gonna work well. In Australia the 666 Butter vodka
makes a really great espresso martini with heaps of texture, I'm gonna stay
classic in this one though but still keeping local since that's kind
of the theme, so White Light vodka from here in Victoria is just a really nice
clean tasting wheat vodka but it is 47 % so a little bit boozier
than usual and just really carries all those strong flavors home.
As I've said, Australia is obsessed with the espresso martini so of course
we've come up with the ultimate coffee liqueur.
Mr Black do roast their own coffee and this has about half the sugar and 10 times
the coffee of your average coffee liqueur.
So don't expect to be sleeping after one of these although that's never really
the point is it? The coffee flavor is really intense and
bittersweet and delicious and this is actually sold in the States now so I'm
excited to show you it as an Australian product that you can actually get!
Kahlua is the other obvious choice that's what Dick Bradsell used in his or
something like Tia Maria, it's just going to be a little bit sweeter but that also
might be more to your taste anyway.
As I was researching this
I did come across Dick Bradsell saying that his little trick is to take a
little coin of lemon skin and just
squeeze it over the top, so that the oils will just give a really
nice lemony aroma and it totally makes sense to me that
that would just sort of lift the whole cocktail,
as well as popping any little air bubbles so that you get a really
nice smooth head on there. So we're gonna try that.
So it doesn't have to be pretty because obviously we're just doing a little
spritz and discard, so however you find it easiest to do it.
We're going to go 45 mils of our vodka.
20 mils of coffee liqueur
30 mls of our freshly pulled espresso or whichever substitute you're using.
Just because I spilled a little bit.
I like to add a small amount of vanilla
syrup as I feel it helps to boost the body of the drink and the vanilla
marries all of the other flavors really nicely.
To make it you can just split a vanilla pod and leave it in sugar syrup
overnight and you can even use the same pod a few times before it loses its
flavor, otherwise you can get little kind of
vanilla extract type things that you can use
because there's not that much going in there
so yeah you don't have to be too precious about it or just regular sugar
syrup is fine too. Mr Black as we said doesn't have heaps
of sugar in it um so you can definitely push a little bit more I'd suggest
keeping it to about five if you're using something like kahlua or tia maria
although of course if you have a sweet tooth as well you can up it again.
Fill your shaker tin with ice.
Seal the tins and shake as hard as you can, but also not for too long because
you want to create a nice fluffy head. Short and sharp shake is important.
Use your hawthorne strainer to hold the ice back in the tin and pour through the
fine strainer into your chilled glass. You definitely want to fine strain this
one as otherwise the little ice chips will melt and ruin the head quicker.
Honestly I don't tend to garnish with coffee beans in the bar because it just
feels wasteful and ends up clogging the sink when they all get dumped out.
But in researching this I did find out that the three being garnish
is a nod to the traditional serving of sambuca in Italy
where the three beans are called "con la mosca" and represent
health wealth and happiness which is lovely. Then we're just gonna do the
little lemon zest over the top and then drop in your three beans for
health wealth and happiness.
The espresso martini, so now you know.
It is nice, the lemon definitely works really well with the coffee there.
Boozy and bitter, just like me.
I mean yeah it basically it tastes like a boozy espresso which is
you know it was originally just called the vodka espresso, the whole kind of
sugary martini thing didn't come into it until much later.
I think that's just important to bear in mind when you're making it or whenever
you're having one made for you. The coffee should really be the thing
that kind of hits you in the face and and that definitely is what happens
especially with the Mr Black there to kind of back up
all of all of the really lovely like chocolatey bitterness
um from the espresso and as I said just having that higher proof vodka just kind
of uh really underpins it all really nicely.
I guess i'm going out now. Oh no, wait, I can't.
Party in the living room?