Nailing those Espresso Martinis at Home

A few weeks ago we launched our home cocktail hotline, ‘Mother Knows Best,’ to help answer your home cocktail questions and put our skills to good use whilst we’re closed.

It’s been so much fun answering all your whatsapp messages coming into the hotline each day; everything from ‘the best Agricole Rhum for a Mai-Tai’ (props for that question, absolutely amazing) to the girls who found a random bottle of salted liquorice liqueur at the back of the cupboard (how were those salted liquorice Espresso Martinis!? You never got back to us!).

With more and more questions starting to come in, we thought we’d start a little blog to give some more detailed answers and recipes to our most popular requests. By the end of the lockdown, we want you all to be home cocktail experts!

For issue 1, we thought we’d start with by far the most popular two questions;

How do we make amazing Espresso Martinis at home?

I’ve got all the ingredients for an Espresso Martini, but how do we get the same texture and frothy foam on top of the drink? We’re really struggling to make this the same as our favourite cocktail bars.

The Espresso Martini has risen unstoppably to become one of the UK’s most popular cocktails. It’s the new vodka Red Bull. Whilst all the cocktail bars are closed, it’s clear you’re all desperate to get your fix at home, so here’s all you need to know to make the perfect Espresso Martini in your kitchen. We’ve even included the recipe we use at Mother Mercy so you can get straight to it!

Crema Rules Everything Around Me.

The secret to a great Espresso Martini all lies in the texture and foam, known as the 'crema.' It's the same as the light brown film that covers an espresso made by a well trained barrista. Look out for this next time you order an espresso; its a sign that your coffee has been ‘extracted’ evenly and correctly, giving the coffee a ‘fuller’ mouth feel and much longer aftertaste in comparison to drip or filter coffee.

In the barrista world, crema (literally meaning ‘cream’) is created when high pressure water is forced through freshly ground coffee on a espresso machine, causing the coffees soluble oils to emulsify with the water and trap air bubbles. In an espresso martini, when we add the espresso to the shaker, the coffee’s soluble oils trap air created when the drink is shaken (in the same way we beat egg whites to create meringue) and form a layer of foam on the top of the drink.

If your using filter or instant coffee at home, this explains why it’s difficult to get that delicious foamy head on your Espresso Martini. You really need the high pressure extraction found on a coffee machine to force out those oils and create that crema!

Don’t worry though, this doesn’t mean you need a Ferrari-esque coffee machine or anything fancy; a simple Nespresso Machine or capsule based coffee machine will do the trick (sorry barristas!). Look for something that produces coffee using pressurised water or steam.

There’s alot of debate in the coffee world about whether capsule based coffee machines can claim to make ‘real’ espresso. For Espresso Martini’s, this isn’t really important. What’s important is that the coffee is produced under pressure in some form. In the case of Nespresso, the machine forces steam through the coffee pod to create the crema you need - don’t worry if they judge you!

Does Good Quality Coffee Matter?

At Mother Mercy, we’re big believers in ‘junk in = junk out.’ If you want to create really great cocktails, you should always start with the best possible ingredients.

So, if you have a professional standard espresso machine and an artisinally roasted blend of coffee at hand your drink will taste better, but this isn’t possible for everyone. Similarly, once your expensive artisinal coffee has been battered with ice, vodka and a coffee liqueur, the fine tasting notes of your single origin Ethiopia roast are going to be very hard to distinguish. Whilst coffee can have an incredible variety of flavour profiles based on its roast, beans and origin, it’s best not to get caught up in the discussion around the ‘bloom’ or ‘bouquet’ of a great coffee in this context. Leave that to the barristas.

Whilst flavour and quality always matter, what really matters (in our opinion) for a great Espresso Martini are three things; strength, bitterness and crema.

The Espresso Martini is a sweet drink. It contains alot of sugar and that’s why we love it. We need the fresh espresso to provide some structure, depth and bitterness to the drink to counterbalance all that sugar.

The Recipe

Once you’ve got your fresh espresso theres not much else to it.

Grab yourself a shaker, strainer and ice and lets get going.

To make the Mother Mercy Espresso Martini, build the following ingredients in your cocktail shaker;

Before you start, pop your martini glasses in the freezer. It’ll be worth it!

50ml Ketel One Vodka - you can use any vodka here, but premium spirits do make better cocktails. We love Ketel One for its history and prestige.

20ml Fair Coffee Liqueur - Kahlua or Tia Maria will also work, but we like to keep things premium. Fair is an amazing spirit and liqueur brand that operates with a fair trade ethos and supports the farmers who grow the coffee.

10ml Sugar Syrup - This is a simple 1:1 sugar syrup (1 part water, 1 part caster sugar, you can make a big batch of this at once in a jug). The simple syrup gives the drink a thicker texture and body without adding more alcohol.

1 Shot of Fresh Espresso - Whack it straight in. Don’t worry if its hot, that doesn’t matter. 1 Shot is about 30ml of coffee.

Once you’ve got all your ingredients in your tin, fill it with ice. Try and leave a small amount of room in the shaker. It’s important with Espresso Martinis that the ice is able to move during the shake to generate the air that creates the crema.

Finally, give it a good hard shake, for ages. Really go for it for 10-20 seconds. Don’t worry about overshaking the drink, at a certain point the cocktail will reach a low enough temperature that it won’t dilute much more anyway.

Once you’ve shaken the drink until you can’t anymore, strain the drink into a martini glass.

You’ll need a standard cocktail strainer, sometimes called a ‘hawthorn strainer.’ At Mother Mercy we actually double strain all our cocktails, passing them through a fine strainer to catch the shards of ice to make sure the drink is even smoother!

And you’re done! Now sit back and enjoy your work :)

We hope you found that useful. Don’t forget to Whatsapp message the hotline with any questions or help you need!

Love,

Mother Mercy x