How to Make Coffee Liqueur

This post is part of a series entitled 12 Days of Homemade Christmas I’m teaming with Bringing Crafty Back! 

Now here’s a Christmas gift with spirit (er….should I say, spirits?): homemade coffee liqueur! Sounds fancy, doesn’t it? That’s the beauty of this recipe. It’s got the “wow” factor but it takes all of 10 minutes to assemble. I used this Cowboy Kahlua recipe for inspiration and adapted it for today’s post.

The ingredients are simple and few. Obviously the higher the quality of ingredients you have to start with, the better finished product you’ll have.

• 1/2 lb light coffee (I found a breakfast blend and bought in bulk)
• 6 cups of water (for brewing the coffee)
• 3 whole vanilla beans (such as these sold on Amazon)
• 1.5 cups of vodka
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 3 pint-sized mason jars

For the vodka, I opted for a brand priced in the mid-range. I decided to forego the super cheap ginormous bottles, and obviously telling you to spend $40 for a bottle of fancy vodka goes against the frugal-ness aspect of this series. But know that any vodka would essentially work!

Brew your coffee in a coffeemaker.

While that’s happening, put one vanilla bean into each pint-sized mason jar.

I ended up just bending them so they’d stay nice and tidy in the jar. Next, add in 1/2 cup of vodka per mason jar. Now you can add a little bit less if you’d like it weaker.

By this time, check on your coffee. Perhaps it will be done? Now here’s my super easy cheater way of keeping things simple… I took the carafe off the coffeemaker and dumped in my brown sugar and stirred it up right in there! Fill each of your jars with the coffee/sugar mixture.

Stir gently and cap – that’s it! How easy is that? I also love using these Ball Dissovable Labels on my mason jars. I discovered them over the summer thanks to a double coupon event at Albertsons and now I’m addicted to them! They come off super easy when you wash the jars in hot water.

St. Nick approves!

Now, you do need to let this sit for about a month before enjoying. So I came up with a neat idea:

I made a little label that reads “Do not enjoy until Christmas!” Problem solved!

Incidentally, see the cute box I found from JoAnn’s? It was 50% off – in fact, all their holiday-themed boxes and such were 50-60% off! I paid $2.99 for it after the sale. It JUST fit my pint-sized mason jar!

What do you think?

Another thought to tie this gift out would be to include a couple recipes. Here are some I found you could print and include:

• Mexican Coffee Cocktail
• Mudslide Cocktail
• Chocolate Mousse*

*You can definitely use this for baking/cooking if you prefer to drinking!

Of related interest, you might be curious to see how I made blackberry-infused vodka last summer. It’s actually just about ready to try!

PS – On that post, reader Stephanie wrote and shared her coffee liqueur recipe. You might consider this as an alternate idea/variation to today’s post. According to her notes, it makes a strong coffee flavor.

8 cups water
6 cups sugar
14 tbsp instant coffee
Simmer 4 hours and cool completely.

Add:
1 bottle 100 proof vodka (1.75 ml)
6 tsp vanilla
Bottle and enjoy!

She writes: I use cheap ingredients, the vodka and coffee are whatever costs less and imitation vanilla. Best part of this recipe is that you can drink immediately, although it is better after a week.

Thanks, Stephanie!

Stay tuned for more posts in this series!