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The Brunch Line

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The Brunch Line

Breakfast in a glass…basically

Forget extreme obstacle courses, Brunch is the truest test of your grit and endurance. When you take your place in the brunch line, you're hungry, tired, possibly hungover, and if you're in the Pacific Northwest, you're also cold and wet 9 out of 12 months. Ahead of you is a queue of fellow poor souls each facing a grueling, seemingly infinite, 90 minute wait. The kicker? You get to stare into a warm DRY dining room filled with smiling four-tops sipping their Bloody Marys and casually nibbling their benedicts. Wear comfortable shoes and remember not to lock your knees, you’re in for the marathon because avocado toast IS superior to regular toast.

We have a love/hate relationship with this weekend ritual. The dedication so many people have to late breakfast inspired us to create a cocktail that pays homage to their tenacity–The Brunch Line. This drink brings together some classic brunch ingredients into one glass. The foundation of this cocktail comes from our Hue-Hue Coffee Rum. A blend of cold brewed single origin coffee, premium silver rum, and a small amount of demerara sugar, it's a no BS avenue to a clean bold coffee flavor without excess sugar or artificial flavors/syrups.  And don’t call it a liqueur, cold brewed Hue-Hue is about the coffee, not about dessert.

Coffee base secured, we then incorporate a small amount of Grade A maple syrup, a whole egg white, and Averna–a bittersweet amaro that adds herbal notes and highlights the chocolatey qualities of Hue-Hue. The drink is topped off with bubbly water resulting in a delicious creamy coffee cocktail that's virtually breakfast in a glass. Avoid the lines, dust off your toaster and make this brunch-in-a-glass at home.

Here's how to make The Brunch Line cocktail.

Ingredients:

  • 2 oz Hue-Hue Coffee Rum

  • .75 oz Averna

  • .5 oz maple syrup

  • 1 egg white

  • 3-4 oz sparkling water

  • lemon twist


Combine Hue-Hue, Averna, maple syrup, and egg white in an empty shaker. Shake hard without ice for 25-30 seconds to really froth up the egg white (this is called a dry shake). Then toss in a few ice cubes and shake again for 10-15 seconds to chill the mix. Strain into a chilled Collins glass filled with ice, and top with sparkling water. If you're fancy you can even sub Prosecco in for the sparkling water. Garnish with a lemon twist, and enjoy!

The Hue-Hue-Tini

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The Hue-Hue-Tini

Chocolatey, Bold, and Smooth

The 80's were a pretty grim time for cocktail culture. This decade soft rocked itself into creating some pretty horrendous cocktails made with mass manufactured mixes and Tom Cruise style tin flips. But it wasn't all bad. Some true gems came out of that bar scene; chief among them, the Espresso Martini. The origin story of this drink involves a supermodel, weird sexual innuendos, and vodka (sounds like the 80's). But like all great things born in the 80s, it grew up, got a better haircut, and refined itself into something truly remarkable. The Hue-Hue-Tini is our way of paying respect to the padded shoulder days, with a refreshed focus on the true star of the show: coffee.

To understand a drink like the Hue-Hue-Tini, it's important to first learn a bit about coffee. Up until the mid 90's, coffee was treated by most as a non-perishable pantry item. You'd buy it when you needed it, and hang onto it until the tin was empty. The coffee "beans" were roasted incredibly dark until the only flavor left was something similar to burnt oily toast. A shot of espresso in the 80's was likely a concentrated cup of bitter char and coffee oils. Not exactly the most appetizing thing to add to a cocktail...and pretty apparent why they covered this flavor with an overly sweet coffee liqueur.

Fast forward some 30 years, we find ourselves in a completely unrecognizable culture of coffee aficionados. It's now possible to find excellent fresh coffee in nearly every corner of the US. Here in Portland, there's a craft coffeehouse sourcing and roasting the best coffees in the world practically every 3 blocks. We sought out the best coffee to compliment the taste profile of our signature silver rum used in our Hue-Hue Coffee Rum. The true rich flavor of light roasted coffee shines through without the need to cover up imperfections with a ton of sugar and artificial flavors–like most coffee liqueurs on the market.

The Hue-Hue-Tini takes the bright & bold qualities in Hue-Hue and builds upon them with vodka, bottled cold brew, and a small amount of 2:1 simple syrup. Lemon oil expressed over the top is a delightful addition that brightens up the nose of this cocktail and allows the chocolatey notes to shine through. Simply put, it's the perfect cocktail to enjoy after a delicious dinner or to get your weekend started at brunch.

Here's how to make a Hue-Hue-Tini.

Ingredients:

Before you start building this cocktail, chill a coupe glass with a couple ice cubes or by sticking in the freezer for 10 minutes. To build, add Hue-Hue, vodka, simple syrup, and cold brew to a shaker with a large scoop of ice. Shake ingredients hard for 20-25 seconds. Strain into your chilled coupe glass, and squeeze the lemon peel over the glass to express the lemon oil into the cocktail. Serve immediately and enjoy!