Turning Guinness and Jameson into The Best Coffee Liqueur!

Hi, Friends of Cocktails! When you mix coffee-infused whiskey and Guinness, you create a truly unique coffee liqueur–and there’s only one person who can really tell you if it’s good: James Hoffman! Find out to see if I pulled it off in the full episode at the bottom–along with exciting news for our Friends of Cocktails in Europe, and even a bonus recipe. In the meantime let’s make the liqueur, followed by a quick cocktail we’ll call it the Irish-tini. But first, a bit of Cocktail Time history!

Making DIY Coffee Liqueur was actually one of the first Cocktail Time episodes that got some traction, and that was all the way back in 2020. The bump in views came after Truffles on the Rocks recommended it on his channel, and now that we’ve passed the 5-year mark of making content on YouTube it seems nice to look back on the beginnings.

This throwback is also a great opportunity to remember the work of other creators that inspired me in my work, and James Hoffmann was certainly one of those people. That’s why I took his idea for drinking donuts in coffee and turned it into an Old Fashioned, which he called “the best kind of escalation of his nonsense that he could imagine”. 

I’m not sure he got to try the Donut Old Fashioned though. So when I came up with the idea of combining coffee, Guinness beer and Irish whiskey in a coffee liqueur I thought that it’s best not to leave it up to chance. After recording this episode, I’m heading to London, and I’m bringing a bottle of today’s coffee liqueur with me. So let’s take a look at the ingredients we’ll need to make it. 

I have some freshly ground coffee which will be used to infuse Jameson Irish Whiskey instead of creating a cold brew. This coffee whiskey base will then be mixed with sugar and Guinness beer, but to really enhance the coffee and chocolate notes of the most famous stout beer we’ll use a technique we’ve shown on the channel before, called Cryo-concentration.

I should’ve thought of this recipe for St. Patricks, which really comes to show when inspiration hits, but with that all that’s left is to grab your tools–it’s Cocktail Time!

Guinness Coffee Liqueur

Whiskey Cold Brew

● 600mL · 20oz Jameson Whiskey

● 65g Freshly Ground Coffee

Cryo-concentrated Guinness

● 860g Guinness (2 Cans)

Guinness Coffee Liqueur

● 466mL · 15.5oz Whiskey Cold Brew 

● 280mL · 9.33oz Cryo-concentrated Guinness

● 112g Sugar

We’ll start by pouring two cans of Guinness into a container, which we’ll then place in the freezer. With the help of freezing and precise defrosting it will allow us to reduce the amount of water in the Guinness, and in turn, concentrate the flavors. If we tried to do this using heat, we’d alter the flavor of the beer, which we don’t want here since it plays a big role in the final liqueur.

While that’s freezing, let’s make our whiskey-based cold brew. For this just combine the Jameson with the freshly ground coffee, and leave it to infuse for 24 hours–giving us enough time for the Guinness to fully freeze too! So strain the infusion using a Chemex and we’re ready to move on to the next step: concentrating the flavor of our beer, which will take a little math. 

Start with a bowl placed on a scale, write down its weight, add a strainer and zero everything out. Then add the frozen beer on the strainer and check the scale again. In my case the amount of Guinness added weighed 860g, and as the beer starts to melt, the rich parts will drip through first, leaving water and lighter flavors on the filter. 

We’re aiming to melt about a third of the original weight, so 287g of our concentrated Guinness. Just remember that when you’re checking how much has already melted, you need to take into account the weight of the bowl to avoid getting a wrong amount. It’s now time for us to combine our two ingredients, before adjusting our final liqueur. 

So using a magnetic stirrer, combine the whiskey cold brew, sugar, and cryo-concentrated Guinness. Once everything is incorporated, you should give your liqueur a quick taste before bottling it. I don’t want to praise it too much just yet, but it’s smooth, rich, and just a little bitter with dark chocolate, roasted coffee, malty stout and whiskey for the structure. Exactly what I was going for!

Speaking of ready, let’s use our star of the day in a quick and simple cocktail I’m calling the Irish-Tini–a Shakerato styled cocktail to showcase the full flavor of today’s Guinness Coffee Liqueur. 

The Irish-tini

● 90mL · 3oz Guinness Coffee Liqueur

● 1 dash 20% Saline Solution

Start with a chilled shaker and add in the ingredients. Shake hard with ice, double strain into a chilled Nick & Nora or Martini glass, and you’ll see this gets crowned with a beautiful foam on the top–that’s mostly from the Guinness.

Our cocktail has all those amazing flavor notes from the liqueur we tasted before, but it’s just elevated with a richer texture and extra brightness–amazing! I guess recipes like this might be the reason why the cocktails subreddit named me “the Hoffmann of Cocktails”, alongside the amazing Anders Erickson.

I’m honored to be in such great company, even being compared to James in the first place, and if you want to find out if I managed to give him the liqueur, click on the full video below. Before that, I have exciting news to share with you: Liber & Co. syrups are now available in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands!

Besides being syrups just like the ones found in the best bars around the world, any of your favorite Liber & Co. syrups can be turned into fast and easy liqueurs. Take their delicious Tropical Passionfruit Syrup for example.

Yes, you can create great cocktails with it, but you can also mix the syrup with the right amount of vodka or even rum to create a liqueur–which I made this time using equal parts of Liber&Co’s Tropical Passionfruit Syrup and lightly aged rum, and that’s it.

So with such a delicious liqueur ready in seconds, why not test it out in a Pornstar Martini!

Liber & Co. Pornstar Martini

● 60mL · 2oz Vanilla Vodka

● 30mL · 1oz DIY Passionfruit Liqueur

● 15mL · 0.5oz DIY Passionfruit Liqueur

● 7.5mL · 0.25oz Vanilla Syrup

● 2 drops 20% Saline Solution

Into a chilled shaker add the ingredients along with plenty of ice, shake hard and double strain into a chilled cocktail glass. You’ll get the perfect amount of passionfruit flavor without passionfruit pulp clogging up the strainer with this one. And no garnish needed either, just don’t forget about the chilled Sparkling Wine palate cleanser.

Making great cocktails doesn’t get any easier than that,but if you’d like to learn more about making DIY liqueurs check out my e-book on our Patreon page too. It’s full of tips and recipes to elevate your cocktail game. Now don’t forget to check out if James Hoffman was able to try today’s Coffee Liqueur. I’ll see you next week–cheers, Friends of Cocktails!