Coffee Cocktail Weeks – Coffee Negroni

My good friends at Perola declared two weeks in the middle of December as “Coffee Cocktail Weeks”. So, of course I just had to participate with a drink using their newly imported Mr. Black coffee liqueur. In this case, I went for something in the Purple Coffee Negroni direction. However, I wish I had studied the colour wheel first. In the end, the drink turned out very delicious, but apart from an additional bpf gin float not very purple.

I already mentioned the Mr. Black Cold Drip Coffee Liqueur in my post on the “Same Old Dog” cocktail. As mentioned in the article, Mr. Black uses a blend of cold drip coffee from Colombia, Kenya and Papua-New Guinea. On top of that, Australian wheat vodka and cane sugar complete the recipe. The final liqueur is bottled at 38 % ABV. When I took part in a coffee liqueur blind tasting, the Mr. Black won the first and second place, with the regular one coming in second and a limited edition single origin coffee liqueur in the first.

Coffee, cacao and vanilla

The Mr. Black tastes like you would expect from a coffee liqueur. You can taste coffee from the beginning of the sip. Afterwards, the taste turns slightly smoky with hints of nuts and caramel. Towards the end of the sip cacao and dark chocolate become noticeable. Obviously, the liqueur is sweet, but it is well integrated and balanced by a hint of acidity from the coffee. This indeed is an exceptional coffee liqueur!

Not purple

Well, first a question: What do you get when you mix blue, red and amber? – What I can tell you is that you do not get purple as a result! While I still like the colour of this Coffee Negroni with the colour-changing Illusionist Gin, I decided to float a tiny bit of additional gin to get at least a blue hue on top of the drink. Apart from that, I used Noilly Prat Ambre as the vermouth.

Obviously, you could float all the gin on top of the rest of the ingredients. However, this way you get an extra dose of juniper on top of your readily mixed coffee-flavoured Negroni and I prefer it that way. Apart from that, even at half an ounce, the Mr. Black shines through nicely. Yet, the coffee flavour does not overwhelm the rest of the flavours. The Illusionist Gin and the vermouth both give the drink structure and nicely complement the bitterness of the Campari.

*The fact that I received a product reviewed in this article for free, did not – in any way – influence the rating of said product. The coffee liqueur was provided by the Perola GmbH.