A new liquor can be made from used coffee grounds . But be warned. In the process of becoming 80 proof, the new beverage loses almost all of its caffeine .
Oops.
Portuguese and Spanish researchers will be publishing the complete how-to in the journal LWT — Food Science And Technology.
From Science’s description, the used coffee grounds booze was created using a fairly standard fermentation process involving sugar and yeast. That doesn’t make it sound much different from any other hard liquor.
Long gone are the days when booze was made just from grain, except for vodka which might be daringly made from potatoes. If you’re patient enough and know what you’re doing, everything from satsumas to grapes can apparently be converted into some sort of alcohol.
But used coffee grounds may be going slightly beyond the call of duty.
The invention was sparked by a contest asking distillers to invent new beverages, so it was actually expected to taste good.
According to the researchers, the used coffee ground liquor had the smell and taste of coffee. They called it pleasant. But they’re the inventors so they probably weren’t going to say it was awful.
The report in Science acknowledged that the new beverage was bitter and probably could benefit from further aging: “[J]udges described the drink as smelling like coffee and tasting bitter and pungent…[T]he quality was good enough for consumption.”
Hmm. Good enough? That’s a less-than-ringing endorsement. But I suspect that the flavor could be improved with a little more experimentation.
So have I finally discovered a purpose for those million-dollar bird-certified coffee grounds that keep piling up in my kitchen? I was just using it as million-dollar bird-certified compost for my garden.
At the moment, I have the most wide-awake monkey grass in New Orleans.
Maybe the next logical step is to figure out how to make my own used coffee ground liquor.
[photo credit: Debs (ò?ó)? via photopin cc ]
