Crafting Cocktails with Absolutes
For the past several years, flavored alcoholic beverages have been increasing in demand. Everything from flavored beers and wines to vodka, gin, and mixers have exploded onto the market in a big way. And with customers craving novelty, one of the biggest ways to enjoy delicious flavors is with cocktails. Absolutes provide flavor designers with a simple and efficient way to introduce a wide variety of flavors into their products. The counterparts of essential oils, absolutes are naturally extracted from plants and provide a strong dose of natural flavor in high concentration, which makes them perfect for pairing with the strong alcoholic flavors of cocktail concoctions.
And there are really a number of different ways to use absolutes in cocktails. One of the simplest and most popular methods of integrating absolutes into cocktails is by introducing strong plant flavors into beverages. Strong berry flavors, citrus, apple, pear, mango, peach, and even flavors such as cinnamon and licorice all feature strongly in many different alcoholic flavors. When crafting these types of flavors, flavor designers can bypass the more “confection” style flavors – which tend to be a little bit sweeter, and less realistic – to create more sophisticated, “natural” feeling flavors in these products.
However, simple flavors are not the only means by which absolutes can be used to craft absolutely delicious cocktails. At present, some of the more popular cocktails and alcoholic drinks on the market combine many different flavors to create designer drinks that mimic everything from whipped cream and marshmallow to orange creamsicle and apple pie. These novelty flavors are only continuing to increase in popularity, and have a tendency to follow trends throughout the rest of the flavor market – not a surprise, given the social nature of cocktails!
Absolutes can be used to create buttery notes, sweet notes, fragrant fruit notes, and much more. The qualities of absolutes extend far beyond the plants they are extracted from, so be sure to explore the many different ways that they can be used in flavor creation for these types of delectable grown-up treats.
Flavor designers working on the creation of these delicious designer cocktails would be remiss to pass up absolutes in their quest to create clever and appetizing cocktails. And one thing is absolutely certain – it is going to be interesting to see how absolutes continue to change the game when it comes to the flavor production of alcoholic beverages.