Congratulations to Park Brannen and Jane Danger who won the Buzzed! Coffee and Cocktail Competition held last week at Compose in NYC.
 
Here is the what Park reported:
My partner – the very talented Jane Danger (head bartender in charge at Cienfuegos) and I set out to create a cocktail that could stack up against four other barista and bartender pairs from around New York City. Working together over the previous couple of months, we set out to create a beverage that would speak to both of our skill-sets and passions. Jane specializes in preparing punches, both classic and modern, and seeks to push peoples expectations of what a punch can be. She uses fresh ingredients and spirits from around the world to give her guests a truly wonderful experience that I was able to witness first hand at Cienfuegos. Watching Jane, I noticed some parallels between the world of classic cocktails and specialty coffee and thought of just the coffee to bridge the gap.
 
Café Grumpy takes great lengths to source coffees seasonally and with the highest quality, and it just so happens that the wonderful coffees from Ethiopia are now in season. The day before in the cafe, I tasted a cold-brewed version of our fresh crop Ethiopia Yirgacheffe and I knew it was perfect for what Jane and I were setting out for. A nice punchy acidity, with a myriad of fruit flavors, as well as a clean developed body would pair very nice with the cocktails that Ms. Danger concocts with some of the most delicious spirits in the world. I brought some to her and we began to work through some of the flavors that we found, adding representative ingredients as well as some of our own favorite spirits. Jane shared the vision of a fresh seasonal cocktail, that would have an underlying flavor of the coffee I provided, but only underneath the layers of flavors we extrapolated from the cold-brew concentrate.
 
I was able to play with the coffee concentrate a little more, and found that it lacked the acidity that I was looking for, so I took a couple of extra steps and they resulted in a truly wonderful base to work from. I blended and iced a Chemex batch to bring out more of the pleasant acidity that Ethiopian coffees are known for, as well as left the concentrate unfiltered. Normally the coffee would pass through both a paper filter as well as a cloth pad, but I cut out that step. Straining through a french press screen, I found so many more flavors present than we saw with just the filtered concentrate. When the resulting coffee from these two methods were blended together, we were ready to move forward.
 
Much guessing and trying eventually yielded us what we thought to be a wonderful beverage, but it still lacked the nice soft body of the Yirgacheffe as well as the red fruit flavors that made it so compatible with Jane’s preferred drink format – the punch. Jane had a lightening-bolt idea that I believe put us over the top and gave us the ability to win the contest, and that lightning was in frozen form. A Pinot noir sorbet, made in Greenpoint near the Cafe Grumpy roastery, when added to the drink really filled out the tactile balance and added the pleasant red fruit flavors we were looking for. The drink was transformed, and the rest is history.
 
The contest itself was a mind-blowing experience! Working behind the bar with bartenders was such a great learning experience, as well watching the other teams perform and compose some really beautiful and tasty drinks. A jam-packed crowd watched our every move, and Jane assembled every drink perfectly. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner, or a better field of competitors to work with. The experience was as fun as it was educational, and I am so happy to have represented Café Grumpy at this fantastic event.
 
The Italian Royal Family Punch
1/2 oz lemon
3/8 oz Passion syrup
1 oz red wine sorbet
3/4 oz coffee concentrate
1/2 oz Zucca
1/2 oz Smith and Cross Rum
3/4 oz English Harbour 5 year
Shake it up & top with scoop of sorbet