Liquid Coffee Concentrate

Liquid coffee concentrate is coffee extracted so strongly that a spoonful makes a cup. You stir it into hot or cold water, or milk, instead of brewing from grounds. It’s an old idea: the first US trade mark for “essence of coffee” dates from 1870, New Orleans cooks kept a home-made drip extract in corked bottles, and today brands sell bottled concentrates that are many times stronger than brewed coffee. Here’s how they work, how to use them and how to keep them.

The short version

• A very strong liquid extract that you dilute by the spoonful.
• Use it hot or cold, with water or milk.
• Strengths vary: follow the label. Jot, for example, uses a tablespoon per cup.
• Keep it as directed; many need the fridge.
• An old idea: bottled essences date back to at least 1870.

How is it different from instant coffee and cold brew?

All three start with a strong extract of roasted coffee. What happens next is different:

	Liquid concentrate	Instant coffee	Cold brew concentrate
Form	Liquid	Dried powder or granules	Liquid
Made by	A manufacturer, or at home	A manufacturer	At home or in a café
How you use it	A spoonful in water or milk	A spoonful in water or milk	Diluted about 1:1 or more
Keeps	As the label says; often refrigerated	A long time, sealed and dry	Up to about two weeks in the fridge

William Ukers, writing in All About Coffee in 1922, explained why the powders won out for long keeping: liquid extracts lose quality over time because water slowly breaks down what’s dissolved in them, and they ferment readily unless a preservative is added. Dry “soluble” coffees didn’t have that problem, though they had to be kept airtight because they soak up moisture.

How do you use a coffee concentrate?

1. Read the label for the amount and storage. Strengths vary a lot.
2. Measure the concentrate into your cup. Jot uses one tablespoon.
3. Add water or milk, hot or cold. Jot says its bottle makes about 14 cups of 6 to 10 oz.
4. Stir and taste, then adjust with more concentrate or more water.
5. Close it and store it as the label says.

Jot describes its concentrate as 20 times stronger than regular coffee and says one tablespoon holds 140 to 150 mg of caffeine, about the same as a strong cup of black coffee. Its uses go beyond a mug: swap the water for milk for a latte, add it to a smoothie, or drizzle it over vanilla ice cream.

How long does it keep?

That depends entirely on the product, so check the bottle. As one example, Jot asks for its concentrate to be refrigerated before and after opening, and says an unopened bottle keeps for 90 days from manufacture, with a drink-by date printed on it. Home-made concentrates have no preservatives and should go in the fridge and be used quickly.

Where did coffee concentrates come from?

The idea is much older than today’s bottles. Ukers records several strands:

• Coffee essence, 1870. The first trade mark registered in the US for coffee or coffee essence was number 425, dated 22 August 1871 (first used in 1870), in the name of Butler, Earhart & Co. of Columbus, Ohio. The label read “essence of coffee”.
• Poor early extracts. Ukers says demand for something that would make a good cup when added to water produced many liquid and solid “extracts of coffee”. Most were mixtures of caramel, carelessly made extracts of chicory, roasted cereals and cheap coffee, and they soon fell into disrepute. “Liquid extracts of coffee galore have appeared on the market only soon to disappear,” he wrote.
• Camp Coffee. Britain’s best-known essence, the sweet coffee and chicory liquid from Glasgow, is usually dated to 1876 and is still sold. See Camp Coffee.
• New Orleans drip extract. The Creole or “French market” coffee New Orleans was famous for was made from a concentrated extract brewed in a drip pot and kept in a tightly corked bottle for café au lait or café noir as needed.
• Java and the Far East. In Java, Ukers says, a favourite method was a strong drip extract, a spoonful to a cup of hot milk. He was far less kind about the “European bottled coffee extract” served by hotel chefs across the Far East.
• Mazagran. French colonial troops in Algeria were said to have been served coffee syrup and cold water on marches near the fortress of Mazagran, which became the café mazagran of Paris.

How was the New Orleans extract made?

Ukers describes it like this. Pour enough boiling water over the ground coffee in a drip pot to dampen it thoroughly. Then add more boiling water a tablespoon at a time, every five minutes, so it drips through slowly into a strong extract. Keep the result in a tightly corked bottle, and use it to make café au lait or black coffee as you need it. A variant browns three tablespoons of sugar in a pan with a cup of water and pours that syrup over the coffee instead. He gives no exact quantities, so treat it as a historical method rather than a recipe.

General guidance only. Follow the label for dose and storage, keep opened concentrates in the fridge unless the maker says otherwise, and remember that a spoonful can hold as much caffeine as a strong cup.

Coffee concentrate vs other methods

• Camp Coffee: the classic Glasgow coffee and chicory essence.
• Cold brew concentrate: make your own concentrate to keep in the fridge.
• Spray-dried instant and freeze-dried instant: concentrates dried into powder or granules.
• Ready-to-drink coffee: coffee sold already diluted, in cans and bottles.

Explore every industrial method in the instant and industrial chapter.