You Can Craft Cocktails With Your Coffee Dripper — Seriously

At the end of the day, the coffee pour-over, used in the morning, may seem like the least useful piece of equipment in your kitchen. This third-wave funnel, whether it’s made by Chemex or Blue Bottle, is designed for brewing coffee by hand (if you’re the type of enthusiast with time on their hands), but a handful of party planners aren’t stopping with coffee: They’re repurposing the pour-over method for pour-over cocktails instead.

Inspired by hip cafes, creative minds behind high-style events have personalized the method, using the basic pour-over technique to dazzle guests with craft cocktails which change colors mid-pour, or infuse gin or whiskey with flavors you might not typically get from a cocktail shaker (like floral tea). We spoke to a few of these beverage directors to see just how entertaining this cocktail hack can get at their imaginative events — and a few tips for how you can bring the party home.

Line Them Up

It can be easy, or over-the-top: Twist by Pinch Food Design, another NYC catering innovator, crafted its own two-tiered pour-over station, a sleek unit made of maple wood and brass which, despite the crafty design, is their way special way to make cocktails faster—if you line up a handful of pour-overs, you can pour multiple drinks at the same time.

“The recent pour-over coffee trend inspired us to apply this method to craft cocktails. Designed for pouring multiple drinks at once, 10 glass funnels sit atop a two-tiered maple and brass shelving unit. This creates a beautiful visual aesthetic and also allows for a quick and efficient service.” – TJ Girard, Twist

Tea Up Your Spirits

At home, the pour-over method is an easy way to flavor spirits with your favorite herbal and floral teas— delicate flavors that don’t need the aggressive cocktail shaker, and whose dried leaves need to be caught in a filter (so they don’t end up in the drink itself).

“Each drink is made by combining the ingredients into a glass or pitcher then pouring it over the tea blend and strained through a filter. The flavor combinations are endless, and it gives a very creative and inspired look to your at-home bar and will surely leave an impact on your guests.” – Lisa Torwick, Canard

Make Pink

Clear liquors taste delicious, but clear liquors look clear. Unless you’re sick of millennial pink, you can make spirits blush with just a flick of the wrist. At Twist, TJ Girard makes clear liquids—like gin, vodka, or blanco tequila—pop with a blend of tea that incorporates dried hibiscus flowers, which gives the spirits a vibrant pink tinge, plus floral notes. “Absorbing flavors and colors, the cocktail changes before the guests’ eyes,” says Girard. To drink pink, here’s Twist’s recipe for their Hibiscus Cocktail (Tip: If you’re truly tired of pink, blue will do, too):

Hibiscus Cocktail

Dried hibiscus flowers
Blanco tequila
Mescal
Agua de jamaica
Ginger
Fresh lemon.

Spice Your Own Spirits — Straight Up

Cocktails always mix up your spirits, but if drinking gin straight strikes your fancy, a subtle pour-over can spice it up. Jeremy Allen, the mixologist at L.A.’s MiniBar, fiddles with spice to flavor even the most straightforward spirits. Give your gin a kick of ginger, or make whiskey extra seasonal with a hint of coriander. You can make it in advance and serve your signature spirit straight to guests on the rocks, or bottle it up and wrap a bow around it as a gift—better yet, keep it for yourself.

“Making things that taste good at home is always trial and error, but that’s also what’s fun about it. Using a pour-over to make your own flavored spirits is exciting because you can taste your ideas almost instantly. Two of my recent homemade booze ideas were inspired by fancy soaps at a gift shop: clementine & clove and cardamom & coffee. Hit up the spice rack, add a fruit component and pick a booze for the base. Hint: early grey goes with everything, and chamomile goes great with tequila.” – Jeremy Allen, MiniBar

Just For Show

At the West Village’s Slowly Shirley, a Tahitian Coffee cocktail is served in a glass—but not the glass you might expect. Here, style holds substance, as their Tiki-style drink is served inside a Chemex coffeemaker. The pour-over isn’t intended as a drinking glass, let alone a cocktail glass, but its clean lines make for a rather attractive look.
“The Chemex was chosen for the Tahitian Coffee, because of the coffee element in the cocktail. It is also a unique serving vessel for a cocktail, and, with its wooden collar and leather tie, also has sort of a rustic, Polynesian look to it that I’ve always thought lent itself well to a Tiki-style cocktail,” – Jim Kearns, Slowly Shirley