hello everyone in today's video i'm going to show you a few different techniques to clarify coffee i began this experiment in hopes of making a perfectly clear espresso martini and if you haven't seen that video please give it a look with the link below for this clarification i tried using agar agar whole milk charcoal filtering and also a combination of these techniques to get the most clear and colorless coffee at home without the use of any special equipment in fact one of the final tools i used was something you probably already have lying around or could easily pick up at any grocery store or pharmacy before we dive in if you're new here and you like these sorts of videos please subscribe below and hit the like button to get this video seen more most of these techniques will work to give you clear coffee however there will always be some pigment left i think there's a big misconception when we talk about clarifying cocktails to mean that they need to be colorless which is not the case clarifying something means it is transparent and without cloudiness and i know what you're thinking why do this well i love a fun challenging experiment and honestly because it's pretty satisfying to see something as dark as coffee transformed into something that resembles water while still retaining some of its original flavors the first technique i used was clarifying using agar agar i've used this method before in my serendipity video where i made clarified passion fruit juice the agar causes the liquid to form into a gel which traps the solids of the liquid then you can lightly squeeze or let it melt through a filter and you'll be left with a clear liquid first i will pull two shots of espresso once it's finished i'll weigh it out on a kitchen scale minus the weight of the glass this gave me about 51 grams of espresso then i will weigh out point zero two percent of that weight in agar agar powder i'll add the agar agar to a pot with a small amount of water i used about a quarter cup i'll whisk this together and let it come to a boil for two minutes from there i added my gel to the espresso and stirred until it was well combined i put this mixture into a container in the refrigerator for a few minutes to firm up into a gel agar is great and that it can gel at a fairly high temperature as compared to something like gelatin once gelled i'll break it up a bit and place it into a coffee filter over a pitcher to collect the clarified coffee the gel will gradually melt and all of the cloudy bits will stay trapped in the gel it's a bit hard to tell because the coffee is still very dark but it did yield a very clear final product it actually has a cleaner taste and you can still get all those delicious chocolatey bitter notes from the coffee however like i said it was too dark and it seemed like a different clarification process was necessary next i tried milk clarification if you're not familiar with this process just sit tight because i'm going to give a quick overview in just a second for a more in-depth tutorial on this please see my milk clarification for milk punch video linked below for this first milk clarification process i tried using espresso i pulled two shots and it became clear pretty quickly that there just isn't enough water content to get the kind of clarity i was after simply adding water would have diluted the flavors so i needed something else that was concentrated enough and still had a sizable liquid component enter the cold brew this is one of those nitro cold brews i'll be using plain cold brew as well in a little bit for this process i'm going to be using one can of nitro cold brew one cup of whole milk some vanilla extract and some citric acid i added one cup of whole milk to a saucepan over medium heat once it starts to get steamy i'll begin whisking to keep the milk from scalding once it starts to boil i'll turn off the heat and add a pinch of citric acid to break the curds from the whey citric acid is a great alternative to using lemon or lime juice because it has a very neutral taste it won't add any flavor to the finished product but just a pinch is enough to break the curds from the whey then i'll add in my can of cold brew [Music] and finally 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract i'm adding the vanilla extract to add a bit more tannin and flavor to the final product since the curds will strip away a lot of the flavor i whisked all of this together and then let it cool to room temperature i like to transfer this to a measuring glass or something that has a spout to make it easier to pour slowly i poured this through a 200 micron nut milk bag the first pour is going to run pretty murky as the milk curds need to settle in the bottom of the bag then i swapped out my bowl poured it back into the glass and continued to cycle through until the coffee mixture came out clear always be sure to pour the liquid slowly as to not jostle the curds too much otherwise you'll break them up and increase the cloudiness and slow the clarification process as you can tell the milk clarification did a much better job of removing pigment from the coffee but the final product was still quite dark and somewhat cloudy once i could tell that this was as clear as it was going to get i turn to the next method activated charcoal the activated charcoal filter will absorb any impurities in the liquid including pigment and some of the more volatile chemical compounds leaving a clear water-like liquid instead of starting from scratch i used the milk clarified nitrous cold brew and added two capsules of activated charcoal to it then stir to combine this only needs to sit for 5 minutes for the activated charcoal to work its magic but i let mine sit out for a while longer and if you look closely at the top you could see some clear coffee sitting just at the surface i was really excited to see if this was actually going to work after the mixture has sat for a while i stacked two coffee filters to extract the coffee from the charcoal unfortunately the filters i had just weren't fine enough i stacked a couple more and poured it in slowly but still no luck i even tried a different kind of paper filter with no luck so if you plan on trying this method i'd recommend getting a super fine filter because i am extremely stubborn i refused to give up on this experiment and pulled out something i never really thought about using a brita water filter i saw a video a while ago where someone poured pepsi through a brita water pitcher and the soda came out looking much clearer so i figured why not give it a shot i poured my charcoal coffee mixture through there and the first pass separated most of the charcoal sediment from the coffee it was still very gray and cloudy i passed through again and it got even clearer the inside of the brita started to look pretty muddy from all the charcoal so it appeared to be leaving the sediment behind which was great but also kind of disgusting so i definitely wiped this out before my next pass when i poured it out you could see that it still had some brownish tint to it so i went for a third pass my third pass the charcoal had been completely filtered out and only the clarified coffee remained there is still a bit of a yellowish tint so as you can guess i gave it one more pass i removed some of the darker tints though some of the yellow remained but for my purposes i was pretty pleased with the outcome this was my first successful attempt at clarifying and removing the color from coffee it's pretty stunning to see the contrast between a normal cup of coffee and this but to be honest the charcoal did remove a lot of the taste from the coffee so i wanted to try one last round in a brita with just milk clarified coffee and no activated charcoal to see if that helped retain some of the flavor i couldn't find the same nitro cold brew as the last time so i used this plain starbucks cold brew which was much easier to clarify than the nitro even though it didn't taste as strong i repeated the entire process of the milk clarification and once it was clarified i ported through the brita again after passing it through the brita filter twice i was left with a very similar color to the charcoal clarified one but with a bit more flavor i also found that it's beneficial to rinse the brita filter between passes this whole process would definitely benefit from starting with a brand new filter as well and here we are the clearest coffee that i could make at home without any scientific equipment and it made for an excellent clear and colorless espresso martini which again if you haven't seen the video of please check out the link below and just for fun because i knew someone would ask i did just pour the cold brew straight through the brita filter and it started off coming out colorless but then eventually got darker though it was still pretty clear now the most important question was this all worth it in a word nah i don't think it is yeah the espresso martini looked cool and it definitely tasted great but it's just a cool gimmick you know don't get me wrong this was just a fun experiment and i was excited for the challenge of clarifying and removing the color from coffee and then to see if i could still make one of the darkest cocktails out there clear and colorless but in the end i think you really lose so much of what makes coffee coffee once you strip away all of the oils and tannins to then use this in a cocktail you have to make up for it by adding another coffee element somehow like i did with the rapid infusion of coffee beans and rum i think this is true of a lot of clarified cocktails there's a big craze to clarify everything and it takes away what makes the drink special in the first place they look cool but the process to get there can be quite arduous and in the end you just want the cocktail i think in concept cocktails like existing condition serendipity it works or most other milk punch cocktails anyways that's my two cents on the matter i'm still glad i did it like i said i love a challenging experiment especially with something that would result in such a contrast from where it began and i hope you enjoyed watching it and picked up a thing or two along the way if you do like these sort of experiments please let me know in the comments below and perhaps another one you'd like to see thank you so much for watching if you've made it this far please give this video a like it really helps out my channel and do please subscribe if you haven't i'll be returning with more cocktail-centric videos soon so be on the lookout for those don't forget to visit theweprirl.com for more recipes as well cheers everyone see you soon [Music] you