The Cooper Spirits Co has announced “Slow & Low Coffee Old-Fashioned,” the first-ever expansion of its Slow & Low brand. The new expression is inspired by Café Brûlot, the classic coffee drink from New Orleans, where the Slow & Low brand first launched. It is produced in partnership with Intelligentsia Coffee and is the first bottled coffee cocktail that uses brewed coffee from the renowned roaster.
Slow & Low Coffee Old-Fashioned contains a blend of straight rye whiskey aged two years; Intelligentsia Cold Coffee made from a blend of coffees from Ethiopia, Guatemala and Peru; raw honey; demerara cane sugar; aromatic bitters and orange peel.
The development of Slow & Low Coffee Old-Fashioned was spearheaded by Chad Solomon, Cooper Spirits’ Director of Trade Advocacy and Innovation. Solomon was also directly involved in the creation of the original Slow & Low. It took about 60 iterations of Slow & Low Coffee Old-Fashioned to achieve the optimal balance between the ingredients and reach the sensory targets for aroma and mouthfeel.
“Slow & Low is more than a bottled cocktail, it’s a lifestyle, a complete mindset that celebrates a free spirit, the will to push boundaries and create new discoveries,” said Solomon. “This ethos is what led us to partner with Intelligentsia, an iconic player in the coffee industry. We were excited to collaborate with them, thereby innovating on both coffee culture and Slow & Low to bring a new version of the classic coffee cocktail, Café Brûlot, to life. Bold, bright and brimming with baking spice, our Slow & Low Coffee Old-Fashioned is made from a base of straight rye whiskey and thoughtfully sourced and extracted Intelligentsia Cold Coffee that is lightly sweetened with raw honey and demerara cane sugar, modified with aromatic bitters, and pointed up with navel orange peel. It clocks in at a muscular 80 proof and is devilishly delicious.”
“Cooper Spirits sought us out because of our coffee expertise. They genuinely cared about every ingredient that was going into this new launch,” said Bailey Manson, Innovation Manager, Intelligentsia Coffee, Inc. “In order to create a truly authentic coffee cocktail, Slow & Low spent a lot of time learning about how we think about coffee, how we approach it, what our sensory values are, and how we’ve approached other projects. We spent a great deal of time formulating and selecting the perfect coffee for this collaboration, as we didn’t want it to taste like generic roasted coffee. We’re excited to provide this unique and superior coffee cocktail experience for coffee and cocktail adorers to enjoy.”
Cooper Spirits and Intelligentsia Coffee reviewed a number of options to find the perfect coffee that would pair well with the base of the cocktail and also be able to thrive in a cold format. Further, the coffee needed to provide a relatively blank canvas for the cocktail base to work off of, but also add its own positive nuance to contribute to the overall flavor profile of Slow & Low Coffee Old-Fashioned.
The team landed on Intelligentsia’s Cold Coffee blend, which always has a base of Washed Ethiopia from the company’s partners at METAD Agricultural Development PLC, and supplemented by coffee from Guatemala, produced by Rony Asencio at Finca Santa Ana, and Peru, produced by Origin Coffee Lab, during different points of the year due to seasonality.
Bottled at 40% ABV, Slow & Low Coffee Old-Fashioned is currently available for $26.99 per 750ml bottle.
