How to Prepare Your CoffeeLicor Café
What you need
Ingredients run from the top of the cup to the bottom; the last item is the bottom layer. Values are normalized to a true 100% stack.
- Grind
- Ground coffee or roasted whole beans — both appear in Galician recipes; use naturally roasted coffee, never torrefacto
- Water temperature
- Macerated at room temperature; served ice-cold, often straight from the freezer
- Total time
- 11520 min
Licor café is Galicia's coffee liqueur: roasted coffee left for a week or more in orujo, the local grape-pomace spirit, sweetened with syrup, strained and drunk ice-cold in small glasses after a meal. It is made in home kitchens as much as in distilleries, in countless family formulas that all share the same two things, orujo and coffee. Recipe books carried licor de café formulas from the 1850s, and a Ferrol confectioner published a recipe in 1893 that is still one of the methods in use: spirit, ground coffee, water and sugar left to macerate for six days, then filtered and bottled. Today the commercial version is a protected geographical indication, Licor Café de Galicia, while the homemade bottle in the freezer remains its everyday form.
Steps
Dissolve the sugar in a little hot water to make a syrup, then let it cool
Sugar barely dissolves in strong spirit, so stirring it straight into orujo leaves a gritty layer at the bottom. A small amount of hot water dissolves it completely. Cooling it before it meets the orujo stops the alcohol and its aroma from evaporating off the warm liquid.
Mix the cooled syrup with the orujo and add the coffee
The coffee is extracted by the spirit itself, not by hot water, so the grounds go straight into the sweetened orujo. Strips of orange or lemon peel, or a cinnamon stick, go in at this point if you use them.
Seal the jar and leave it for 8–10 days, stirring once a day
Alcohol extracts coffee slowly at room temperature, so the colour and flavour build over days, not minutes. A sealed jar keeps the alcohol from escaping. Daily stirring stops the grounds from settling into a cake at the bottom, where the spirit can no longer reach them.
Strain through a fine cloth, twice, and bottle
Fine coffee particles left in the bottle would keep extracting and make the liqueur muddy and harsh. A second pass through clean cloth removes what the first one missed, and the clear, near-black liquid is ready to bottle.
Chill it well and serve in small glasses after a meal
Cold mutes the burn of the spirit and thickens the syrupy texture, so the coffee and caramel notes come forward. The alcohol keeps it from freezing, which is why many Galician homes keep the bottle in the freezer.
Cup ready
Time to enjoy your Licor Café
Brewed the way they do it in Spain. What next?
Tips
- Use Galician orujo if you can — the regulator's technical file notes that the grape-pomace spirit changes the coffee's flavour during maceration, which is what separates licor café from coffee liqueurs made with neutral alcohol.
- Add the peel of an orange or a lemon, or a cinnamon stick, to the jar — several Galician recipes do, and Camilo José Cela's literary recipe uses the peel of two bitter oranges.
- Keep the bottle in the freezer and pour it as a chupito, or over ice in a short glass — both are common ways to drink it in Galicia.
- Pour it after big festive meals — that is where it belongs, and in Galicia a glass is often left out for the Three Kings on the night of 5 January.
Common mistakes
- Using torrefacto coffee, roasted with added sugar — the protected Galician liqueur forbids it, and its burnt, bitter edge comes straight through after a week in the spirit.
- Pouring hot syrup into the orujo — part of the alcohol and the spirit's aroma evaporates, and the liqueur ends up flat.
- Straining it only once through a coarse sieve — the fine grounds that remain keep extracting in the bottle, and the liqueur turns cloudy and bitter.
- Serving it at room temperature — warm licor café tastes hot and sugary; it is meant to be poured very cold.
FAQ
How old is licor café?
It has been made in Galicia since at least the 19th century. The regulator's technical file links it to Galicia's trade with the Americas, through ports such as A Coruña, and to the fruit and herb liqueurs made in the kitchens of Galician manor houses (pazos). Recipe books carried licor de café formulas from the 1850s, Santiago's José María Blanca used it in an 1866 confectionery manual, and Eduardo Merín of Ferrol printed a full recipe in 1893. A producer from Chantada showed a commercial licor café at the Lugo regional exhibition of 1896.
How strong is it?
It is a spirit, not a coffee drink. The protected Licor Café de Galicia must be between 20 and 40% alcohol by volume and carry at least 100 g of sugar per litre. Homemade bottles vary with the orujo used and how much syrup goes in.
Is licor café the same as a coffee liqueur like Kahlúa?
No. Licor café is built on orujo, a grape-pomace spirit with its own strong character, and the Galician regulator holds that this spirit reacts with the coffee during maceration rather than simply extracting it. Its protected form also bans coffee extracts, concentrates and added flavourings — only real roasted coffee steeped in the spirit.
Why does Cela's novel matter to licor café?
Camilo José Cela, the Galician Nobel laureate, put licor café into his 1983 novel Mazurca para dos muertos, complete with a recipe: orujo, roasted coffee beans, rock sugar, crushed walnuts and bitter orange peel in a clay pot. The regulator's technical file names this as the literary mention that did most for the drink's fame in recent decades.
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