Brewing a desi coffee liqueur

Bandarful uses coffee from Chikmaglur for making liqueur

In a country that produces its own coffee, it has taken its time to pour its own homegrown coffee liqueurs - spirits infused with coffee and sugar or syrup. Until Quaffine launched in Goa last year, we were mostly downing espresso martinis made using Kahlua by Pernod Ricard. At the Vault Festival this year, we chanced upon some ‘Bandarful' coffee liqueur named after its mascot langoor. It was playfully executed in an edible waffle cup like Monkey Mellow, a cocktail made of caramel sauce, coconut cream, and burnt marshmallow as a garnish.

We chatted with Ansh Khanna, founder of Himmaleh Spirits, who began his distillery journey with two gins, Kumaon & I and Jin Jini, last year. When he moved to Los Angeles in 2013 as a student and later to Chicago to work at a winery, he soaked in the coffee culture. On return to India in 2018, he saw the chai-drinking nation sipping more speciality coffee than ever before. "Having a distillery in the making, which focuses on implementing the philosophy of provinciality, terroir, tracing ingredients to their roots, we began creating a homegrown coffee liqueur set up," says Khanna.

The journey of Bandarful started with tasting coffees at speciality coffee farms and roasters. "We narrowed down Chikmagalur, which has the most consistent and high-quality coffee we were looking for," he added. Compared to gin-making, which takes a week to 10 days, making a liqueur begins by sourcing the coffee.

Bandarful is made from 100 per cent arabica coffee, which has been treated using all three methods - natural, honey, and washed. Rice spirit is made from locally grown Uttrakhandi broken rice varieties, which have a subtle expression and allow the coffee flavours to dominate the taste. "We experimented with temperature to design a custom-made system within the distillery to brew coffee very slowly at a desired temperature. This we transfer to a custom tank to cool at a low temperature to preserve the intrinsic quality of the coffee. To this, we add sugar regularly and allow the sediments to settle," says Khanna.

Freshly brewed coffee liqueur tastes excellent, but Bandarful's challenge was creating a product with a stable shelf life. While no preservatives are added to the liqueur, he advises the bottle be stored in the refrigerator and consumed within 3-4 months of opening.

"When creating the packaging, we thought of the langoor which appears whenever we eat our breakfast, lunch and dinner in the hills. Without fail, it appears out of nowhere, like a self-proclaimed ambassador. The intelligent yet playful animal reflects the fun element of consuming coffee liqueur," says Khanna. Bandarful grants its playfulness to the consumer, offering room for offbeat adventures. A coffee liqueur milkshake, or even an addition to that scoop of ice cream. Priced at Rs 2,750 in Maharashtra, it is available at all leading liquor stores.

Khanna sees the homegrown market expanding. "Commercial products we import use regular commercial coffee, and they are made in nations that don't roast their own coffee. Like Africa and South America, India has a beautiful production ecosystem of growing and roasting coffee. I wonder why we didn't think of this earlier," he smiles.