Favorite Flavor Combinations: Coffee and Pineapple

A touch of coffee and pineapple..

The fragrance of coffee is one of those lovely things that belongs to our comfort-zone, really, what would we do without it?

I`m gonna write a little series on my favorite flavor combinations and coffee and pineapple is first out. The pairing of flavors is something that i`ve always been interested in and i`m more or less always on the hunt for new flavors to play with.

But also old and proven flavor pairings are fun to mix with and good to imbibe and like the classic cocktails always will be there. One such flavor combination is coffee and pineapple and especially in the tiki drink world it`s a classic.

Pineapple goes well with cinnamon too – another tiki classic. But in this post i`ll deal with the coffee. Every coffee lover knows how important it is to choose good quality and flavorful coffee – beans or blends. I have over the years tried many different coffees and i have now settled with 3 types that i think is superior to any other.

These 3 coffees are first the coffee from Louisiana (especially Community Coffee) then Kona coffee from Hawaii and finally Jamaican Blue Mountain. These three are more flavorful, strong and fullbodied than any other i have tried from anywhere. The Community Coffee is my house coffee of the three.

I recently introduced that coffee to a co-worker and he said i have turned his coffee-world upside down and that he´ll never want another coffee…that´s how good he found it to be and i`m not going to say against that. He did put it above Blue Mountain which is a good coffee..

So good coffee for great cocktails! and coffee in cocktails is a wonderful thing, it creates a contrasting flavor and paired with pineapple is a marriage in heaven. When it comes to flavor pairings a rule of thumb is that the things that grows together in the same climate also goes best together.

Now the pineapple – it gotta be FRESH! i like the ones that are not yet fully ripe but still fragrant since they are really fresh and not too sweet. You can check if a pineapple is ripe by tearing off one of the top leaves, it should go off easily and by sniffing on it, it should be very fragrant. The kinda almost-ripe ones i like are lightly fragrant, the leaf goes off but not too easily and they are a bit greenish.

Put pineapple and coffee together with dark rum, lime and sugar and you´re in for a treat. Here´s a very classic type of tiki drink, i call this one Coffee Barrel, a bit boring name i know but it fits with the rum barrel mug i used. (These cool rum barrel mugs are from Smuggler´s Cove)

COFFEE BARREL

Place 5-6 coffee beans in a shaker and crush them but don´t make powder out of it. Add 5-6 chunks of fresh pineapple and muddle with the crushed beans.

Add:

0.5 oz fresh lime juice

1/4 oz orgeat

0.5 oz sugarcane syrup (i used Petit Canne)

Dash Aphrodite bitters (Dr Adam Elmegrab`s)

1 oz Jamaican dark rum ( I used Coruba)

1 oz white cachaca ( i used Abelha which is very smooth without being industrial – it´s handcrafted small batch)

Shake hard with ice and double strain into a tiki mug or chimney glass with crushed ice. If using a large mug like the rum barrel mug you may make a double recipe.

Float Smith & Cross (a good float)

Garnish mint sprig and pineapple chunks

This tastes rummy, spicy and tiki! and the addition of aphrodite bitters blends well with the pineapple-coffee theme since the bitters contains coffee as well. So let´s move on to one of my favorite cocktails, the daiquiri. And here´s my version of the Aphrodite Daiquiri:

APHRODITE DAIQUIRI

1 oz white rum ( i used Havana Club 3 yo)

1 oz Smith & Cross

0.75 0z fresh lime juice

0.5 oz pineapple syrup

2-3 dashes Aphrodite bitters

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled coupe.

Garnish with a rough golden sugar rim.

Liquid gold with just a touch of coffee and pineapple…