Espresso Martini

The espresso martini contains caffeine and alcohol. But it also contains multitudes. When mixed, shaken, and poured today, two histories meet in the glass, two tales of revolution and evolution come together in a drink that had to be laughed out of the room before it could be welcomed back.

And wow, is it ever back.

The espresso martini, if you haven't heard, is the cocktail on (and in) everyone's lips. That's saying something for a drink that was a punchline not too long ago, a symbol of the worst years of both coffee and cocktail culture, when coffee was either instant or a fresh pot of burnt, and mixed drinks were built on cheap bottled mixers and hardly a drop of fresh anything in sight.

London bartender Dick Bradsell created the espresso martini in 1983 when, as the story goes, a patron asked him for something to wake her up (she apparently used more colorful language than that). It then found its way to the martini menus that dominated bars in the 90s through early aughts, listed alongside juvenile concoctions such as the Appletini, chocolate martini, key lime pie martini, and—my god, were they marketing to kids?—cotton candy martini.

By the end of the aughts, though, things were shifting quickly for both coffee and cocktails. "Third wave" coffee roasters began popping up in cities, advancing a more thoughtful vision of coffee: closer ties to growers, skillful hand-brewing techniques, a rethinking of espresso, and an outright rejection of the dark roasts that had been the norm up until that moment. Running parallel was a similar sea change at cocktail bars. Bartenders became studious mixologists who quit free-pouring and started measuring precise jiggers of spirits and fresh-squeezed juices over crystal-clear prisms of ice.

There was no safe harbor for the espresso martini in such serious times.

But a funny thing happened. After such fundamental reboots, coffee and cocktail pros started to have fun again. They'd raised the bar and worked hard doing it; now they could relax a little and play more. Their skills were so developed that they could mix a Long Island Iced Tea or an Amaretto Sour and actually make them taste good. They could put a Sex on the Beach back on the menu without feeling embarrassed about it, because it was going to be good sex on the beach.

This is why we've reached the perfect moment for the return of the espresso martini, a drink that embodies those two historic arcs. Today, the coffee is dialed in, and its flavors are nuanced. A new generation of coffee liqueurs offers much more depth, and the vodka, well, it's still vodka. In many bars, whole new spins on the espresso martini are being created, some featuring bitter amaro, others with layered infusions, and many that include drops of saline solution for a flavor-popping balance.

But those are the professionals. We have a different question: How do you make a good espresso martini at home? This is easier said than done. Yes, the drink itself contains little more than coffee, coffee liqueur, vodka, and simple syrup. But one of those ingredients—the coffee—is frustratingly variable, and can make or break the drink.

What I have below is a recipe, but, maybe more importantly, also a set of observations, tips, and recommendations to help you make a better espresso martini on your own. The bad news: A really good espresso martini can be difficult to make at home. The good news: In a world where many people still drink burnt coffee and chocolate martinis, most folks will be just fine.

What Makes a Great Espresso Martini?

Here's an easy starting point: An espresso martini is not a martini. I suppose someone could argue that it is a martini, with the coffee liqueur taking the place of vermouth, the espresso serving as a flavor-boosting addition similar to olive brine for a dirty martini, and the three little espresso beans floating on top serving as a stand-in for the olive or lemon twist garnish. But then you'd have to explain why an espresso martini is shaken and not stirred. No, it's called a "martini" because it comes in a martini glass.

But whatever, we call it what we call it. How should it taste? "In my mind, the perfect espresso martini highlights the espresso," Joshua Thompson, a bartender and sommelier, told me when I asked him for his take. Thompson was part of cocktail wizard Dave Arnold's opening bar team at Bar Contra in New York City and now runs Barabica, a consulting company specifically focused on incorporating specialty coffee into cocktails—he has spent more time than most thinking about how to make coffee cocktails delicious.

Building on Thompson's point, an espresso martini should have a robust coffee flavor without tasting weak, watered down, or overly bitter. The vodka should give it zip—it is a cocktail, after all—but it should be a background note, not so potent that it tastes like you're pounding shots between glugs of coffee to keep your eyes open on an all-night bender in Moscow.

The coffee liqueur should add a rounded coffee flavor that enhances the shot of straight coffee in the drink, and the whole thing should be just sweet enough to tame the strong flavors in the glass without tasting like a syrupy dessert.

And finally, a good espresso martini should have a silky, creamy texture topped by an even silkier, creamier cap of microfoam, not unlike the steamed milk on a good cappuccino. This texture is critical, and, depending on how you make the drink, not easy to achieve. (More on that below.)

Espresso Martini Ratios

"I like to tweak the espresso until it tastes great, then build the cocktail around that," Thompson said about his process for dialing in an espresso martini. "But that doesn't work for a standard recipe, and it requires a lot of skill." He's once again right—I can't publish a recipe for an espresso martini that tells readers to first obtain the gear and skills of a professional barista, and then combine them with the know-how of a seasoned bar pro. We need an actual recipe.

But here too is a caveat: Below is a recipe, and it should work pretty well for most, but it has to be treated as guidelines subject to adjustment, because exactly how you balance the drink will depend on the exact coffee you use, the brand of coffee liqueur, and your own personal tastes.

In my own testing and exploration of the cocktail, I began by doing something I like to do when tackling a fairly formulaic recipe: creating a spreadsheet. In it, I mapped out the ingredients and ratios across multiple published recipes, including those from famous cocktail bars like Death & Co in New York City, the original recipe by Dick Bradsell, and many leading food and drink publications such as The New York Times, Liquor.com, Punch, and Food & Wine.

Here are the ranges of ratios I found, and my thoughts on how well they worked:

The main thing I'd call attention to in the above table is my decision to ditch the simple syrup entirely. Many recipes call for it, but I found that if I replaced the syrup with extra coffee liqueur, I could sweeten the drink nicely without it becoming cloying, while also further enhancing the overall coffee flavor. Thompson co-signed my move to eliminate the simple syrup, telling me, "I don't typically use simple if I can avoid it." He reassured me that I was not at much risk of guiding people at home towards a too-coffee-forward cocktail by doing so.

That said, the balance of the cocktail will depend on the specific coffee you're using, its strength, and the brand of coffee liqueur (Kahlúa is sweeter, some of the more specialty brands like Mr. Black are less so); you may find that you want a splash of simple in your espresso martini at home, and if so you should add it.

Testing Coffee Types

Coffee is a dizzyingly variable beverage, which means the espresso martini is a similarly variable cocktail. As Thompson summed it up to me, "Coffee is a living, breathing thing, and that is what makes this so difficult. I truly believe coffee is the most complicated beverage in the world: It undergoes fermentation just like beer or wine, you have a drying process, there's the step of roasting—roasting is so complicated—and then you're still not done because the onus is on you as the consumer not to f** it up."

The challenge of writing an espresso martini recipe for people to make outside of a professional setting is not only accounting for all the variation possible in a single shot of espresso, but also searching for alternatives outside of espresso, because I know with certainty that a good chunk of you have no way to make espresso at home. Two of the most obvious non-espresso choices are strong coffee from a Moka pot and homemade or store-bought cold brew concentrate.

When I told Thompson I was experimenting with cold brew concentrate to create a recipe that's accessible to more people at home, he was sympathetic but dubious. "Espresso martini does have 'espresso' in the name," he said, adding, "Espresso will always yield a better result—it's better to buy a shot if you have to."

Fair enough, but I still had to give it a try.

The Importance of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS)

Many things can make one coffee taste different from another: the bean's origin and how it was farmed and processed there; how it was roasted; and how you brewed it—which method, with which ratios of coffee to water, and in how much time?

One crucial way of quantifying these differences is through a coffee's total dissolved solids (TDS), which measures the extent to which the coffee's soluble compounds have dissolved into the water. You can think of it as a numeric expression of a coffee's concentration or strength. When I emailed Jesse Raub, the accomplished barista and former Serious Eats writer, for his advice on coffee options, he mapped it out for me: "Espresso concentration is about 8.5 to 10% total dissolved solids on average," he wrote. "Drip coffee is around 1.2-1.5% TDS...[and] cold brew [concentrate] is around 4-5% TDS, and a moka pot brews around 3-5% TDS."

As you can probably guess, we will need more coffee if using one with lower TDS, and less if it's as high as true espresso. This was very clear when I tasted the cocktails made with different types of coffee.

Espresso

This is the correct choice for an espresso martini. It's the most concentrated option in terms of TDS. And, because it's not filtered through a paper filter, it also retains oils that contribute to the formation of an espresso martini's signature foam. But it's also the most difficult for most people at home.

The bottom line: Make or buy espresso for your espresso martini if you can. That may be impractical or impossible, though, so let's consider the alternatives.

Moka Pot

This is arguably your second-best option. Like espresso, a moka pot is not filtered through paper, making a richer shot with coffee oils that support the formation of a good foam. The moka pot is the device most Italian households use in place of the espresso they drink when out at a cafè. But while it's strong, it's not actually espresso and has about half the TDS of the real deal.

This means that you need to increase the quantity of moka pot coffee to achieve a similar level of coffee flavor in the cocktail, although I don't recommend doubling it, as that would dilute the cocktail too much. Using abou 50% more is a good compromise (so, 1.5 fluid ounces of moka pot coffee compared to the 1 fluid ounce of espresso per drink).

Cold Brew Concentrate

Cold brew concentrate is close to a moka pot in TDS, so it's also about half as concentrated as espresso. It's a very appealing choice for folks at home, since you can buy it by the bottle or make your own—the espresso martini is then as simple as pouring three ingredients (vodka, cold brew, and coffee liqueur) into a shaker and shaking.

But there are downsides. First, cold brew concentrate is not fresh like a just-pulled shot of espresso or a cup of coffee from a moka pot, and as it turns out, the freshness of the coffee is key to creating a good foam. Adding to the trouble, cold brew is usually filtered, so it lacks the oils that can aid in foaming. Cold brew also doesn't taste like espresso, so the result is milder, rounder, and lacks that espresso punch.

In my recipe below, I'm listing cold brew as an option despite these downsides, because its convenience—including how much easier a big batch of cold brew makes shaking up multiple espresso martinis in quick succession—is undeniable, and the results aren't necessarily bad, even if they're not quite ideal.

Other Coffee Options You Should Probably Forget

In case you're wondering about coffee from an Aeropress or a pod system like Nespresso, I'd suggest avoiding both. In each case, the TDS tends to be lower than even that of a moka pot and cold brew concentrate, around 2 to 3%. That's just a tad stronger than standard drip, which means they'll fall far short of the desired concentration and flavor of an espresso. Can they be used? Yes, and you may find that you're happy enough with the results, but I wouldn't recommend them—they're just too far outside the desirable zone here.

The Keys to Great Espresso Martini Foam

The foamy top of an espresso martini is one of its calling cards. Its quality can be judged visually, but also by how well it supports the traditional three-bean garnish without them sinking into the liquid below.

According to Raub, "Getting the proper shaken foam will likely be way easier with fresh espresso due to the crema. Crema is just trapped CO2 gas in coffee oils, and espresso is also a colloid—solid particles suspended in a liquid (which also contains dissolved coffee particles)—so there's more particulate to create nucleation sites [for bubbles to form]." He also noted that the high TDS of espresso is likely a significant factor in keeping the drink thicker and thus more capable of trapping air while shaking.

Freshness is also important, as coffee degrades over time and loses some of its foam-forming potential. This means brewing or pulling the shot shortly before mixing the drink is critical. To offset the excessive ice-melting heat of that shot, Thompson recommends keeping everything else very cold: The vodka can stay in the freezer (it won't freeze over due to its high alcohol content), and even the coffee liqueur can be well chilled.

"When you shake a hot espresso, you'll melt too much ice into it, and water doesn't foam—so more dilution means worse foam," he explained. Having everything as cold as possible offsets the heat of the fresh coffee, allowing you to shake longer without over-diluting.

Shaking, by the way, is the other critical part of good foam, and you need to shake more than you may think. "Many home bartenders don't shake cocktails enough," Thompson said. "People think that the more you shake, the more water you add [as the ice melts], and that's technically true, but the rate of melting slows dramatically as the cocktail chills—an extra five seconds of vigorous shaking will add a lot of foam, but not much water."

So now you know: fresh coffee, preferably espresso, shaken hard with vodka and coffee liqueur until your hands start to freeze. Oh, and a teensy-tiny pinch of salt—it makes the flavors pop and keeps that sweetness in check.