Danny’s Love Potion to take on the world

Neli Coffee’s head roaster will finesse his Australian championship-winning cocktail, called Love Potion, before taking on the world’s best baristas and mixologists in November.

Danilo Humberto de Andrade, known to most as Danny, joined the team at Clontarf’s Neli Coffee in February bringing a wealth of experience in coffee roasting and as a bartender/mixologist.

He won the 2023 Australian Coffee Association Coffee in Good Spirits Championship in Sydney on September 10 and is heading to Taiwan in November to represent Australia at the world championships.

Danny’s cocktail, Love Potion, is a delicate mix of coffee, cascara syrup (the skin of the coffee cherry), St Agnes brandy, Mr Black coffee liqueur, cherry water kefir and sparkling water chilled in a canister chilled by nitrogen.

He also funnels a mist, from a diffuser, into the glasses via a copper pipe to create a wow factor for the judges and infuse the cocktail with additional flavours.

“There were amazing flavours actually – the whole combination was a very complex drink – Concord grape, cherry jam and black plum,” Danny explains.

“The flavour began with the coffee and I started building up things based on the coffee – the coffee flavours, what the coffee was offering. Some of those ingredients were to complement the coffee, some were to contrast the coffee.

“There were a lot of trials.”

What’s so good about the coffee?

That all-important base – the coffee – was produced using beans he sourced from a producer in Kenya and processed using a method Danny developed.

“I have the skill where I can create a coffee processing method and share with producers around the world. I’ve been doing that for a few years now,” he explains.

“The processing is very different. Nobody has done it before. It’s brand-new coffee processing. It’s a winner.”

Danny was secretly confident he could take out the national prize but concedes he has some homework to do before he takes on the world’s best from November 17-20.

“On the world stage, we have a preliminary round, which we didn’t do here, so I need to create another drink as well,” he explains.

Danny will refine the Love Potion cocktail which won him the national title, following feedback from the judges.

Neli Coffee co-owner Ed Thomas says he had no doubt Danny would win the Australian title.

“He told me he was going to win. I knew he’d do it. He’s very, very determined. I had complete faith in him,” Ed says.

“We’re a very small part of it. It’s all him. It’s a personal thing for him. We’re providing whatever support we can in the background.

“We benefit from it anyway … all that experience that Danny gets and the people that he meets, the relationships … they benefit us when he’s back here.”

Danny is the current World Tea Brewing Champion, has previously been a Brewers’ Cup Queensland champion and runner up in the roasting championship in 2017, was part of the team which won the Riches Barista World championship in 2015 and is also a world barista judge.