Recipe Espresso Martini, Done Right: The World-Class Method
How the world's best bartenders
build an espresso martini.
Australia loves its espresso martini. According to Drinks Trade, it's currently the country's most-ordered cocktail. And yet the version most of us drink is a long way from the one Dick Bradsell shook into existence in Soho in 1983.
This is a guide to the real thing: where it came from, how the world's best bartenders build it, and what every great espresso martini has in common — whether it's shaken in front of you at Maybe Sammy or activated in a MXTology pouch.
A Soho story:
where it came from.
The cocktail was born at Fred's Club, a private members' bar in Soho where Dick Bradsell was the head bartender. A young model — folklore says it was Naomi Campbell, though Bradsell himself never confirmed — sat down at the bar and asked for something that would "wake me up and then f*ck me up." The espresso machine sat directly next to his station; he pulled a shot, added vodka, sugar and Kahlúa, and shook it harder than any drink he'd made that night.
He originally called it the Vodka Espresso. The name "espresso martini" came later, in the 1990s, when the cocktail had spread beyond Soho. Bradsell himself was sceptical of the renaming — there's no vermouth, no gin, and the drink isn't stirred — but the V-shaped glass and the showbiz era stuck the name to it permanently.
Bradsell died in 2016. His daughter Bea now runs Swift in London, where the original recipe is still on the menu.
What separates a great one
from a bad one.
There are four things every world-class espresso martini gets right. Get any of them wrong and the drink suffers immediately.
The coffee is fresh.
Coffee oxidises within minutes of being pulled. A great espresso martini uses a shot resting for less than thirty seconds, or a cold-brew concentrate made within forty-eight hours. Espresso syrup is the most common shortcut — and the most reliable way to ruin the drink.
The shake is hard and long.
Audrey Saunders called the espresso martini "the most-shaken drink in the world." You're not just chilling — you're forcing sugar, coffee oils, alcohol and water to emulsify under pressure. That emulsion is what creates the crema.
The glass is properly chilled.
Dale DeGroff has been preaching this for forty years: the glass should be cold enough to fog. Pour a 4°C cocktail into a 22°C coupe and you might as well have skipped the shake. We chill ours for at least thirty minutes.
The sweetness is structural.
Sugar isn't there to make it sweet — it's there to give the foam something to hold onto. A bar build uses about 7–10ml of 2:1 syrup. Most home recipes use four times that, which is why home versions feel cloying.
The world-class recipe,
step by step.
Here is the build a top-tier bartender would use — at Maybe Sammy, Lobo Plantation, Bulletin Place, Dante, Death & Co or any of the top fifty bars in the world.
Espresso Martini
Ingredients
- 45 mlHusk Spiced Rum
-
30 mlFresh espresso
or 25 ml cold-brew concentrate - 15 mlAustralian craft coffee liqueur
- 7.5 ml2:1 sugar syrup
- ×3Coffee beans, to garnish
Method
- Chill a coupe in the freezer for at least 30 minutes.
- Combine all liquids in a cocktail shaker and fill with large, dry ice cubes.
- Shake hard for 12–15 seconds — until the tin is painfully cold to hold.
- Double strain through a Hawthorne and fine mesh, pouring from height to aerate the crema.
- Float three coffee beans in the centre of the foam.
- Drink within five minutes — the foam is at its best in the first two.
Why we use rum
instead of vodka.
Vodka was Bradsell's choice in 1983 because it was the era's most fashionable spirit. But vodka does nothing to the drink — by design, it has no flavour. Coffee can carry the whole weight of the cocktail, but the drink becomes one-dimensional.
Spiced rum, particularly an agricole-style rum like Husk's that's distilled from fresh-pressed cane juice, brings vanilla, cassia, clove and orange peel into the glass. These compounds occur naturally in coffee too, which is why the pairing feels inevitable on first sip. The drink stops being "coffee and alcohol" and starts being a real cocktail.
Ready in
thirty seconds.
We built the MXTology Espresso Martini around the same principles a world-class bartender would use: real Australian-roasted coffee liqueur, cold-brew concentrate (not flavouring), the exact 28% dilution that a hard shake delivers, and Husk Spiced Rum in place of vodka. Sealed in a recyclable pouch and shipped Australia-wide.
When you shake the pouch, you're doing the work a Boston tin does in a bar — emulsifying coffee oils, sugar and spirit, pulling the foam up to the top of the pour. Open, shake, pour into a chilled coupe, garnish with three beans. The bartender's done the difficult thinking. You get to drink the result.
Keep the craft.
Final Pour
A great espresso martini is one of the most technical cocktails in the bar — a small drink with very little margin for error. The temperature has to be right, the coffee has to be fresh, the shake has to be brutal, and the sugar has to be invisible. Every shortcut shows up in the glass.
We don't take any of them.