LA-Based Coffee-Whiskey Maker Fliquor Bean Expands to NY

All photos courtesy of Fliquor Bean.

Los Angeles-based Fliquor Bean, which incorporates organic Mexican coffees into small-batch-distilled whiskey, has expanded to offer its product in New York.

The company was founded by former television camera operator Jerry DeFazio in 2013 in response to consumer demand for locally produced craft drinks with no added ingredients. In this case, the ingredient list for the entire cold-brewing process includes only coffee and whiskey — not even any additional water. DeFazio told Daily Coffee News that despite the New York distribution, the company’s approach remains focused on small batches, with no two batches being the same due to the producer partners and the availability of ingredients.

Coffee for Fliquor Bean comes from the Mexico-based company Mayan Winds and the CONAPROMEX group of indigenous farmers in Chiapas, with beans made available stateside through Orange County’s Bodhi Leaf Coffee Traders. For roasting, Fliquor Bean maintains a relationship with SoCal roaster/retailer Cafe Demitasse. The 100-percent corn whiskey is supplied by Bowen’s, a small-batch distillery in Bakersfield. Fliquor Bean’s role is to meld these two primary ingredients through cold brewing into a liquid that can be sipped straight, or combined with milk and sugar, according to individual tastes.

“It’s trial and error,” DeFazio told Daily Coffee News of the production process. “Since I will never be able to get the same exact bean from batch to batch, I play around with different brew times, coarseness, beans, and so on. We are not trying to recreate the same taste profile as the last batch. This is a craft product so there is a different profile to the whiskey as well as the bean.”