Essences
Jimmy | March 19, 2008If you’ve done your research about distilling at home, I’m sure you’ve come across the many different types of spirit essences that are available to flavour your drinks. Generally speaking they are added to plain vodka, sometimes with sugar or cream additives, to make approximations of various different drinks.
The question is, are they any good? Well, obviously you’re not going to be able to make a 25 year old single malt whiskey from vodka and a little bottle of essence, no matter how clever it might be. If that was the case, why would anyone bother to age spirits as they do, and why would they command such a price premium? If you’re like me though, you’ll be curious as to how close you can get using such a simple procedure. Is that ‘Tennessee Bourbon’ anything like a real bourbon, how does it smell, how does it taste neat, how does it taste with a mixer… all these things are worth finding out. Most people wouldn’t dream of mixing an expensive whiskey with Coke, but if you tend to drink mid-range whiskey and cola then is an essence a cost effective alternative?
Many websites have listings of available essences, but invariably those sites are also selling them and so they don’t give an impartial viewpoint. We intend to assess each one that we try, and give an honest opinion as to whether it is any good - obviously this will always be a matter of taste, but we’ll try to do the best we can and give you some idea whether to buy a particular item or not.
As a final note on essences, one thing that is very useful to know is the ‘ten percent rule’ - namely that if you add 10% of the actual product to 90% ‘fake’ spirit/essence then you will get greatly improved results. Sometimes the subtle tones of a spirit can be incorporated in this way, improving the taste and aroma and fooling the brain into thinking that they exist in larger quantities than they really do. For this reason, if I am trying to make a ‘fake’ bourbon I will take 900ml of my own spirit and then add 100ml Jack Daniels or an equivalent product; this makes a big difference. Obviously you could add more and get even better results, but ten percent is a decent improvement without having to use too much actual product, so giving a good cost/benefit balance.
Well if you want, I can also give a little
Fatbloke | May 31, 2008Well if you want, I can also give a little biased guidance on this, because I’ve tried various ones - some good, some not so.
I’ve just followed the instructions, without any mod’s to try to improve on the product though - mainly to get some idea of which ones I like and which ones I don’t.
I’ve tried the still spirits ones, ambrosia brand ones and prestige brand ones (and I’ve got about a dozen or so waiting to be made up).
Oh and as for putting some of the original product in it to improve it some, apart from the fact that doing that hadn’t occurred to me….I’m too bleeding tight to spend the money i.e. if I can’t make it, I won’t buy it!