A Monkey’s Tail (Cola de Mono)

One of the staple drinks from Chile is the “Cola de Mono” or “Monkey’s Tail”. This drink is very similar to Eggnog, minus the eggs. Traditionally, it is served around Christmas time, but when it comes to booze, you can pretty much have it anytime.

Ingredients you will need:

• Can of condensed milk (I went with the low-fat kind, can’t tell difference)
• Cloves (3 or 4 should be enough)
• Ground Coffee, about 1-2 tablespoons. (You do this in many ways, I opted to cook the mixture with ground coffee, but you can go with instant coffee or you can brew it and then mix, up to you)
• Cinnamon sticks
• Nutmeg (1 teaspoon)
• 5 cups of water (you can use less water if you want the mixture to be sweeter)
• Vanilla Extract
• Pisco. You can probably get away with any alcoholic beverage of 40% and higher alcohol content by volume (Tequila or Vodka could work). Pisco is probably not readily available at your corner liquor store or grocery store. To get Pisco, you gotta know people.

Instructions:

Bring your 5 cups of water to a boil. Turn off stove. Add entire can of condensed milk. Mix. Add cloves, nutmeg and vanilla extract. Bring to boil. Add ground coffee (you can skip this part if you are brewing the coffee separately).

Slowing boil mixture for about 5-6 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and let it cool. Get a strainer and filter out the mixture into another container (removing the cloves and ground coffee). Now refrigerate the mixture for few hours (I dumped it in the freeze for about 30 min to speed-up the process). Get yourself a glass and fill anywhere from 1/4 to 1/3 of it (it’s up to you how drunk you want to get) with Pisco (or your favorite 40% proof beverage), top off your Cola de Mono mixture and drop a stick of cinnamon.

Salud!