A taste of delicious liquid gold
There are many coffee variations that are available today, but these six seem to be on every fan’s must-try list.
MOLECULAR, pour over, Dalgona: There are plenty of fun coffee drinks out there and you can prepare some of them yourself, too.
If you consider yourself a coffee fan, then sooner or later you’ll want to try these six popular variations.
Cold Brew
The charm of cold brew – coffee which is extracted over many hours with cold water – is that the process releases totally different
flavours than when brewed the conventional way, namely: less acids, less bitterness, more fruity and chocolatey tastes.
With added nitrogen, your cold brew will foam up like a Guinness stout. It’s also available on tap at trendy coffee shops. Fans don’t need sugar, so it’s a low-calorie treat.
Nestle was so enthused that it bought Californian hipster chain Blue Bottle Coffee. Originating in the United States, more and more cafes around the world are adding cold brews (nitro and normal) to their menus.
Easy to make
Professionals use a dripper to make cold brew so the water drips over the coffee grinds. The process takes hours and looks a bit like a chemistry lab experiment.
You can also make it yourself, says Wojtek Bialczak, Germany’s barista champion in 2019, who also came fifth in the world championships in Boston, Massachusetts in the US.
Just take freshly ground coffee and stir it in cold water, then leave it in the fridge overnight. Then, 16 to 18 hours later, filter it.
”The more finely you grind the coffee, the stronger the taste,” he says.
Dalgona Coffee
Here’s another hip brew that’s straightforward to make at home. Dalgona, originating in South Korea, is less about the taste than the look, with white and brown layers and a creamy whipped topping that has made waves (especially last year when many people around the world were facing stayhome orders) on Instagram, Pinterest and Tiktok.
It’s also a quick and easy drink to make.
Here’s how:
1. Put equal amounts of sugar, instant coffee and hot water in a bowl
2. Whisk until it’s firm and creamy 3. Fill a glass two-thirds full of hot or cold milk
4. Spoon the cream on top
5. Garnish with cocoa, cinnamon, coffee beans or biscuit crumbs
Dalgona also works with hot chocolate, instead of instant coffee.
Tip: You can also make the creamy topping by beating together very strong espresso and five teaspoons of sugar. The topping won’t be as stiff as if you use instant, but will taste better.
Another variant is the Friday Afternoon Dalgona features a shot of coffee liqueur, nougat liqueur or whisky. Which leads us neatly to coffee cocktails.
Coffee Cocktails
Irish coffee was already a mainstay in 19th century cocktail handbooks but it was pretty much alone there for some time, aside
from the Espresso Martini, says Nicole Battefeld, Germany’s champion barista in 2018.
How things have changed. Google “coffee cocktail” and you’ll find a world of recipes, including Liquid Cocaine, Coffee Sangria and Coffee Colada.
“You can make almost any cocktail with coffee except maybe a margarita,” says Wojtek Bialczak.
The boom is fuelled by competitions such as “Coffee in Good Spirits”, where Nicole Battefeld placed fifth in the 2019 World Cup of Liquor Coffee Artists.
You can create amazing flavours, she says.
However, it isn’t as easy as it may sound, as coffee and spirits are very hard to balance, she says. You need a coffee with more body and more fruit, and it has to be strong so you can taste it along with the alcohol.
“The coffee always has to be at the forefront in terms of flavour.”
Try this at home
Start with an Espresso Martini – or a Vodka Espresso, as it was first called when it was invented in London in 1983. You will need vodka, coffee liqueur, sugar syrup and freshly brewed espresso.
It’s also a great basis to build on, says Battefeld, who offers a whole host of other recipes and variations on her homepage.
Tip: You can lend the classic cocktail a new twist by using high quality whisky, organic cream and fruit-flavoured coffee, says Wojtek Bialczak.
It’s a standard category in the Coffee in Good Spirits championships.
Pour Over
Who would have thought that filter coffee would come back into fashion? Now known as pour over, it’s a high art among hipsters in the world of coffee.
If you’re a self-respecting barista, you pour the hot water into the customer’s filter in front of them – keeping a close eye on the coffee quantity, grind and water temperature.
“There’s also a lot of show,” says Wojtek Bialczak from Berlin, German barista champion 2019 and chief roaster at the Five Elephant cafe chain in Berlin.
Here’s what you need to do:
1. Grind coffee beans medium fine, 50g to 60g or eight to 10 tablespoons for 1l
2. Insert filter paper and moisten with hot water so that the taste of paper disappears
3. Tip the coffee powder into the filter
4. Boil water and let it cool down to 88°C to 95°C
5. Pour a little water over the powder and let it swell for half a minute
6. Pour the remaining water slowly in a circular motion, evenly from the inside to the outside
Oat Milk Cappuccinos
The image of milk has been struggling over the past few years. It’s supposedly unhealthy, most cows are subject to intensive farming practices and they also emit methane, harming the climate.
All that means nowadays, most modern cafes are likely to offer you a plant-based milk alternative.
At One Berlin, the same number of customers order their cappuccinos and lattes with oak milk as with regular milk, says Aylin Olcer, Germany’s barista champion of 2020.
Oat milk combines best with coffee, which is why you’re likely to find it in 95% of cafes, ahead of substitutes made out of soy or almonds.
Bialczak prefers oat milk too, as it’s taste and texture come closest to cow’s milk. He’s dead set against coconut milk in coffee, saying it’s too sweet and the drink “winds up tasting like a Bounty bar”.
Molecular Coffee
Coffee doesn’t have a good carbon footprint – not least because it is shipped all over the globe from where it’s grown.
That prompted Atomo, a startup, to create a coffee substitute, a bit like vegan meat. Called molecular coffee and described as “coffee without the bean”, it’s made out of melon seeds, sunflower seed shells or other upcycled food ingredients that otherwise wouldn’t be used.
”Most test customers didn’t taste or smell any difference,” says Sara Marquart, a food chemist working on molecular coffee at Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW).
The hardest part is recreating the distinctive bitterness that is unique to coffee, she says. The caffeine is extracted from yerba mate.
Coffee contains some 150 different bitter-tasting substances but luckily, not all of them affect the taste, says Marquart. She says
her team sought was to make a coffee that didn’t taste bitter.
Atomo is to launch in the US in July but it may be a while before it reaches European countries. Marquart says the European market isn’t ready for it, anyway – but coffee drinkers are much more open to experiments in Japan, China or South Korea.