This World Coffee Day, Kura is putting a cocktail-inspired spin on specialty coffee with two experimental pours, No.8 Ember and Cafe Libre.

Designed to blur the line between coffee and cocktails, the two creations use coffee as the foundation while borrowing flavours, techniques and ingredients traditionally associated with the bar.

No.8 Ember is a shaken, coffee-forward drink built around espresso, citrus and house-made syrups. The drink combines espresso, orange juice, lime, nannari syrup and a bourbon-style syrup, with a small amount of saline solution before being served over ice and topped with soda.

The resulting profile brings together smoky, citrus-forward and lightly sweet notes, giving the espresso-based drink a format that sits somewhere between a specialty coffee and an evening cocktail.

Priced at ₹480 plus taxes, No.8 Ember is one of Kura's more experimental expressions of coffee.

The second creation, Cafe Libre, takes inspiration from the classic rum and cola combination and rebuilds it around coffee. Cold brew is paired with cola, a rum-style syrup and fresh lime, then served over ice.

Priced at ₹480 plus taxes, Cafe Libre retains the familiar contrast of cola, citrus and rum-inspired flavours while making cold brew the central ingredient.

Beyond the Experimental Pours

Kura's coffee programme extends beyond these two creations, with an emphasis on Indian coffee origins and techniques that explore how coffee can be presented.

The café's house blend is sourced from the Bababudangiri hills of Chikkamagaluru, a region associated with the early history of coffee cultivation in India. Its manual brew bar also features beans from regions including the Northeast, Himalayan foothills, Koraput, Araku and the Western Ghats, alongside coffees from international roasters.

The programme also incorporates techniques that are less common in conventional café formats. These include milk clarification for crystal-clear coffee drinks, alcohol-free bourbon and rum-style syrups, and Frost, a smoother interpretation of cold brew.

According to Kura, the coffee programme has been developed with inputs from World Barista Championship judges and coffee educators, bringing together specialty coffee knowledge with experimentation in flavour and technique.

With No.8 Ember and Cafe Libre, Kura is using World Coffee Day to explore coffee beyond its traditional role as a morning beverage, treating the cup as a canvas for flavours and techniques more commonly associated with cocktails.