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Black Russian

Vodka and coffee liqueur, built simple and strong — the White Russian without the cream.

Difficulty
easy
Prep time
3 min
Strength
26% ABV
Glassware
Rocks glass
Base
vodka
Serves
1

Ingredients

  • Vodka
    50ml
  • Coffee liqueur
    30ml
Scale for a party

Method

  1. Fill a rocks glass with ice cubes.
  2. Add the vodka and coffee liqueur.
  3. Stir for 10–15 seconds until well chilled.

Equipment

Don't have everything? Here's what works instead.

  • Bar spoon

    Household swap: Any long-handled spoon works for stirring.

  • Jigger

    Household swap: A tablespoon measure (1 tbsp ≈ 15ml) is close enough for a two-ingredient drink.

Missing an ingredient?

Each swap below says what it changes and how to correct for it, so you can decide whether you are making this drink or a neighbouring one.

  • Instead of Coffee Liqueur

    Best substitute: Amaretto

    This is the sweet element in this drink.

    Flavour impact: Swaps the coffee bitterness for a nutty, marzipan sweetness — a different but pleasant drink.

    What changes

    Expect more sweetness, less bitterness and more strength. Still a good drink, and a slightly different one.

    Sweetness ↑
    The drink will land sweeter, which also makes it read as less sharp and slightly heavier even though nothing else changed.
    Bitterness ↓
    Losing bitterness makes the drink rounder and more approachable, and takes away the structure that stopped it tasting like squash.
    Strength ↑
    Amaretto is 28% ABV against 20%. A stronger bottle raises the alcohol in the finished drink and, with it, the perceived dryness and heat.
    Character
    Both are sweet, and you lose roasted, bitter-edged and syrupy, and you gain almond, nutty and smooth. Numbers can't see this: two ingredients can be identically sour and still smell nothing alike.

    To correct for it

    • Cut the syrup or sugar back — start by halving it and taste before adding any back.
    • A dash of bitters restores some of the backbone without changing anything else.
    • Pour a little less, or add slightly more dilution, to land where the recipe intended.
    Moderate confidenceChanges the character significantly rather than approximating the original.Shifts the drinkBecomes a variation

Make it better

  • Use a good quality coffee liqueur — with only two ingredients, its flavour carries the whole drink.
  • Stir rather than shake; this is a spirit-forward drink and doesn't need the extra aeration or dilution.
  • Serve over one large ice cube to keep the drink cold without watering down the coffee liqueur too fast.

Rescue this drink

Too sweet
Reduce the coffee liqueur to 20ml and keep the vodka the same for a drier balance.
Too strong or harsh
Stir for longer to bring in a little more dilution, or add a splash of soda water.
Tastes flat
Make sure the vodka is well chilled beforehand — a warm pour needs more stirring time to come together.
Too weak or waterygeneral guidance
Add a splash more of the base spirit rather than extra mixer. For stirred or built drinks, over-dilution from ice is the usual cause — try a shorter stir or fewer, larger ice cubes.
Served too warmgeneral guidance
Chill the glass, ice and every ingredient ahead of time — a warm pour is the fastest way to lose a cold drink's balance. For one serving, there's no real fix beyond rebuilding it properly chilled; for a batch, keep everything refrigerated until the moment of serving and add ice last.

Make ahead & storage

Batches well

Everything in this can be mixed days ahead and kept cold. It is one of the drinks to build a party menu around.

What it tastes like

The taste, and what drives it

off-dry, soft, light — a spirit and modifier drink served over ice.

Off-dry

Dry → Sweet

Sweetened enough to take the edge off without reading as a sweet drink.

What drives it: Coffee liqueur — carries the most sugar into the glass.

Bitter

Gentle → Bitter

Bitter enough to be one of the reasons you chose this drink.

What drives it: Coffee liqueur — provides the bitterness.

Light

Light → Rich

Light-bodied. It refreshes rather than satisfies, which is usually the intention.

What drives it: Coffee liqueur — adds most of the weight.

Very bold

Delicate → Bold

Very bold — concentrated, and served small for that reason.

What drives it: Vodka — is the most concentrated thing in the glass.

What you smell first

  • CoffeeLeads

    From Coffee liqueur

Every aroma here comes from the liquid itself; nothing is layered on top.

How it was worked out

Each reading comes from the recipe's own recorded taste scores combined with what each ingredient contributes, weighted by how much of it is in the glass. Almost everything in this drink has detailed ingredient data behind it.

How balance actually works →

If it isn't right

What goes wrong with this drink, and why

Only the faults this particular recipe is actually prone to — each with the likely cause, the adjustment, and what the adjustment costs you.

  • It's too sweet

    Likely cause
    Coffee liqueur is carrying the sugar here, and it is the easiest thing in the drink to over-pour — syrup clings to a jigger and a "splash" is rarely the same twice.
    What to change
    Cut coffee liqueur by about a third and rebuild. If it is already made, a squeeze of citrus is faster than starting again.
    What that does
    It will taste drier and slightly thinner — sugar carries body as well as sweetness, so you lose a little weight along with it.

  • It's too bitter

    Likely cause
    Coffee liqueur is doing this deliberately, but bitterness also *builds* across a drink rather than announcing itself — the last mouthful is more bitter than the first even though nothing changed.
    What to change
    Lengthen it slightly, or add a small amount of sweetener. Do not add more of anything sour; acid sharpens bitterness rather than covering it.
    What that does
    The bitterness softens and the drink gets longer. If you were hoping to keep it short and strong, this is the trade you are making.

  • It's too strong

    Likely cause
    Vodka dominates by design here — this is a drink built to be sipped, and it is under-diluted more often than it is over-poured.
    What to change
    Building in the glass for longer, or add a measured 5–10ml of water. Both are the same correction; one is just more honest about it.
    What that does
    Alcohol heat drops and the aromatics open up — a slightly diluted spirit-forward drink usually smells better, not worse.

  • It doesn't smell of anything

    Likely cause
    This drink's aroma comes from coffee, carried in the liquid. Serving it too cold suppresses that: volatile compounds do not leave a very cold drink.
    What to change
    Let it sit for a minute before drinking, and use a glass that narrows towards the rim to concentrate what does escape.
    What that does
    More of the aroma escapes and the drink reads as more intense. The cost is temperature: a drink left to warm also dilutes faster, so this is a trade against how long it stays right.

  • It tastes one-dimensional

    Likely cause
    With 2 components there is nowhere for complexity to hide — a spirit and modifier drink is exposed by design, so a dull one is usually a dull ingredient rather than a missing step.
    What to change
    Change the quality of what is there before adding anything new: fresh citrus rather than bottled, a better base bottle, a dash of bitters. Bitters add layers at a scale nothing else matches.
    What that does
    More going on at the same strength and sweetness. Adding a whole extra ingredient instead usually produces a muddier drink rather than a deeper one.

Taste profile

Sweetness
2/5
Sourness
0/5
Bitterness
3/5
Strength
5/5
Fruitiness
0/5
Freshness
1/5
Creaminess
0/5
Smokiness
0/5

Nutrition & alcohol

Estimate onlyBased on standard pours; coffee liqueur sugar content varies by brand.
Calories
200 kcal
Sugar
10 g
Carbohydrates
11 g
Alcohol units (UK)
2.6
US standard drinks
1.47
ABV
26%
Serving size
100 ml
Show calculation assumptions

Source: Calculated from standard measures

Calorie breakdown: ~144 kcal from alcohol, ~56 kcal from sugar and mixers.

Likely range: 150–250 kcal, reflecting the confidence level above — not a lab-measured figure.

Based on 50ml vodka at 40% ABV and 30ml coffee liqueur at 20% ABV, with light dilution from stirring.

These figures are estimates, not laboratory measurements — individual tolerance to alcohol varies. See our responsible drinking guidance.

Variations

  • Espresso Martini

    Shake the same two ingredients with fresh espresso and strain into a coupe for a frothier, more aromatic drink.

What kind of drink this is

The structure behind the recipe

A built build: a spirit and modifier vodka-based drink, served over ice — clean in the mouth.

Spirit and modifier

Spirit combined with an aromatised or flavoured modifier and little else — concentrated, and served small for exactly that reason.

  • Base

    Vodka

    Spirit in the largest measure — read as the base.

  • Sweet element

    Coffee liqueur

    Sweet liqueur (4/5) and nothing else in the drink sweetens — so this is the sweet element, the way triple sec is in a Margarita.

2 components' roles areworked out from the ingredient's category and recorded taste attributes rather than set by hand — the reasoning is shown above so you can disagree with it.

Technique

built

Components are poured into the serving glass over ice and stirred once, or not at all. Dilution happens while you drink rather than before.

The drink changes as you go: strongest at the first sip, longest and most diluted at the last. That drift is a feature of a long drink and a fault in a short one.

What it ruins: Nothing, but it cannot properly combine anything viscous — a syrup poured last will sit at the bottom.

Everything about building in the glass →How the technique works →

Dilution

In the glass, as you drink

Water from ice typically makes up around 15% of the finished drink for a built build (commonly 10–20%). Dilution is an ingredient here, not a side effect.

Why dilution is an ingredient →

Served

Over ice

Rocks glass · 100ml

Served on ice, so it keeps chilling in the glass. A larger, colder, slower drink than the same spirits served straight up.

Texture and aroma

Clean

Nothing here thickens or aerates the drink — it is as light in the mouth as the liquid itself.

No dedicated aromatic component — what you smell is the spirit itself, which is a deliberate choice in a drink this spare.

Where to go from here

Each of these is here because of something specific about this drink, not as a standard set of links.

Where it comes from

Origin and family

Origin of the Black Russian

Mid-20th-century vodka and coffee liqueur cocktail; the cream-free predecessor of the White Russian.

1934–1979Other mid-century drinks →

On drinks history

Cocktail origin stories are frequently repeated and rarely evidenced. Our history section separates what is documented from what is folklore rather than picking whichever version reads best.

History and culture →

Try this next

Use up your ingredients

Bought a bottle just for this? Here's what else it's good for.

Related tools

Scale this for a party

Work out bottles, mixers, ice and total alcohol units for any number of guests.

Recipe confidence

Simple, consistent two-ingredient formula, though not an IBA-official recipe.

Moderate confidence