Quarantine Drinks V.10: Cold Brew Drinks with Alt Milks

Hello to the non-dairy drinking folks reading this!

This one is for you. We had a fan request for non-dairy ways to make his cold brew more fun. So here we go! 

We used two methods of cold brew as a base - standard water and coffee steeped overnight, and then an alt-milk cold brew, where you're going to steep coffee directly in your alt milk (we used oat milk) overnight, and then strain. 

There are a million ratios and recipes out there for this, but we use a 6:1 ratio of milk:coffee (or water:coffee) by weight. We always suggest our cold brew blend for this. Use more or less depending on taste. I have two drinks for ya using these bases:

Coconut-Date Iced Latte:

We'll start by making some date syrup. This was the first syrup we ever made in house at Demitasse almost 10 years ago when we first opened. We still get requests for the date latte, so sharing with you some trade secrets. ;) 

- Take 30 grams of dates. Make sure they're pitted. Put them in a bowl. 

- Pour 60 grams of boiling water over them. Muddle until it's more or less a water paste. 

- Strain over 30 grams of demerara sugar (or whatever sugar you have, honey will do, too). Pro-tip - use your muddler to squeeze all the goopy juice out of the dates through the strainer to get all the flavor out of those dates. Pro-tip 2 - save the paste and put it in your granola. 

- Stir until the sugar is dissolved. 

Take 2oz of coconut milk (or cream, if you're fancy), 2oz of cold brew and 2oz of date syrup. Mix and pour over some ice. Pro-tip 3 - shave some pecans over this for added texture. Or some orange peel for added aromatics. Or both. Go nuts. Pun intended. 

Rosemary-Maple Oat Iced Latte:

We're going to use the oat-milk-cold-brew as a base for this drink. 

But first, we need to infuse maple syrup with some rosemary. Grab a small saucepan, put a rosemary sprig in there and add 50 grams of maple syrup in there. Add 2oz of water to this mix and put this over a low heat. 

You'll see it start to bubble and foam. I like to stir and spoon the maple syrup over the rosemary. Do this for maybe a minute or two. You should really smell the rosemary coming off the mix. 

Take it off the heat. Grab a shaker. Throw in the maple infused rosemary sprig, add ice. Pour on 5oz of oat-milk-cold-brew and then 1oz of the rosemary maple syrup you just made. Add more if you want it sweeter. 

Shake shake shake. Shake it some more. Strain into a fun cocktail glass if you're feeling fancy. Pro-tip 4 - salt the rim before if you really want to get in the mood. Pro-tip 5 - add an oz of rum or amaretto into the mix if it's 5pm somewhere. 

As always, please tag us if you make this at home! 

Thanks and enjoy. 

- B