The holiday season is officially making its way to the University of Minnesota, marked by the return of the Sugar Cookie Almondmilk Latte at Starbucks and snowfall.
Lee Carter, the co-owner and beverage director of Five Watt Coffee in Marcy-Holmes, shared his extensive knowledge of the process of making holiday-themed coffee drinks at home.
Five Watt Coffee has four locations in the Twin Cities, including one on East Hennepin Avenue near Marcy-Holmes.
Most of the drinks at Five Watt are made with espresso, milk and a sweet base, usually in the form of syrups, according to Carter.
Choose one flavor and build
Carter recommends starting simple with flavors and building from there.
“I start with one idea or one ingredient and kind of go from there,” Carter said. “I find that when I start with too many ideas at once, it’s hard to tell where it is that something needs to be fixed. I’ll usually just build little by little.”
Figure out where you can extract the flavor from
Those setting out to make syrups can take inspiration from and experiment with almost anything to make syrups, according to Carter.
“Anything can be an inspiration really. It kind of just comes down to one idea that can spark the journey,” Carter said.
Carter created much of the Five Watt menu beverages using cocktail bitters as an ingredient.
“Whatever you want to turn into a syrup, you can really try anything,” Carter said.
For minty holiday drinks, Carter suggests tea as an easy source for flavor.
“Historically, I’ve always really liked using tea to make the mint syrup base. Again with tea, there are so many mint teas that you can find, and you can have something really interesting,” Carter said.
Buy the right sugar
Carter recommends finding the right sugar for what you are trying to create based on its flavor profile and how that fits in with other surrounding flavors.
“There’s a lot of different sugars in the world that you could choose from and different sugars carry different flavor profiles,” Carter said.
Granulated cane sugar is a transparent sweetener, whereas brown sugar and sugar in the raw both have more depth to them because of the molasses in them, according to Carter.
“We use cane sugar in our vanilla, and the reason that I chose that sugar is that I wanted the vanilla to come through and be really clear in its flavor profile,” Carter said. “Molasses, especially on its own, has a really harsh deep, earthy, tangy flavor, which is not bad, but with vanilla, for example, I want more of that clear vanilla flavor to come through.”
Cooking the syrup
Carter explained the process he goes through to make syrups:
- Carter recommends starting with equal parts sugar and water by volume. “Let’s just say a cup to the top full of sugar and a cup to the top full of water,” Carter said.
- Put the sugar water in a pot and heat it until the sugar fully dissolves.
- After the sugar dissolves, but before the water begins to boil, add the flavor (mint tea, nutmeg, etc.)
- Boil for ten minutes and then turn down to a low simmer. The cooking reduces the amount of water left in the syrup and determines the thickness of the final product. “I’ll let it reduce about 30% of the water volume,” Carter said.
- After the syrup reaches a favorable consistency, strain it, refrigerate it and enjoy it in coffee beverages for two weeks.
“I usually try to encourage people to make smaller amounts too. If you make a ton of syrup, you might need to be drinking a ton of coffee to use it all within those two weeks,” Carter said.
Enjoy going down that rabbit hole
Carter’s last piece of advice is to not only have a good time while creating syrups for coffee beverages but to chase that creative itch.
“Just have fun and get creative,” Carter said. “It’s definitely fun to go down the rabbit hole of different ideas and different flavors. Again, I’d say keep it simple to a degree, but there’s a lot of room to play within that.”
