Flavors In Cocktails

[Tiare]

I`m very interested in flavors and as far as i know there are Sweet – sugar, Sour – acid, Bitter – alkaloid, Salty – sodium chloride and Umami – savory or meaty.

And then you have various taste sensations like spiciness, temperature (cold drinks tastes better) coolness, like mint, astringency, (tea) and fat.

I believe one key in learning about how to combine flavors is to taste every ingredient separately.
Then to look for ingredients which naturally combine or are naturally combined which in some of my wild experiments sometimes is overlooked.

But i wonder what other ways is there to train ones palate? Just keep on experimenting?

[Paulipbartender]

One way to train your palette is to use an aroma kit as a taste reminder/trigger.

We've got one for Bacardi 8 and one we made ourselves. The tasting kit is a series of bottles each containing individual aromas found in rum. For Bacardi 8 the aromas include madagascan vanilla, smoke, birch tar oil, bourbon vanilla, plums, prunes, fresh pineapple etc. Smelling the aromas then tasting the rum helps train you to identify the specific flavours.

We made our own creating little bottles with a neutral rum (Bacardi) and a range of common rum flavours - tobacco, various citruses, molasses, caramel, cloves, fresh grasses etc

We're going to have to be slightly more scientific though as we're putting one together for Appleton. Luckjily we've got time booked in the Appleton lab with David Morrison and Joy Spence to help us out. Can't wait to get to Jamaica!!!!!

[Tiare]

Originally Posted by Paulipbartender

We made our own creating little bottles with a neutral rum (Bacardi) and a range of common rum flavours - tobacco, various citruses, molasses, caramel, cloves, fresh grasses etc

Do you create these by infusing the Bacardi? then if you want to get the proper tasting kits, how are the proportions and the infusion times? and how do you create for instance the tobacco, simply infusing tobacco?

[Paulipbartender]

Originally Posted by Tiare

Do you create these by infusing the Bacardi? then if you want to get the proper tasting kits, how are the proportions and the infusion times? and how do you create for instance the tobacco, simply infusing tobacco?

For demo purposes they aren't that scientific - just a bit of a cigar, or citrus peel or cloves in some Bacardi

[Hank Koestner]

It would be fun if a full kit like this were available for purchase.

[Tiare]

Hank, i`m going to make my own..its quite easy and then its good to use for a while..for flavor training.

[SamuraiBartender]

There's certainly something to be said for this aromas thing:
I used to smoke hand-rolled cigarettes (& still smoke normal ones), and have noticed (presumably as a consequence - likely the only beneficial one) that I can pick out 'tobacco', 'tar' & 'charred' aromas/tastes in spirits quite easily.

Now, I presume one just piles up loads of aroma bottles with every concievable flavor component you can lay hands on, to better inform your palette's recognition?

Cheers!

[Tiare]

Then i would like to know which are the most common range of flavors in rum?

It would be unpractical to make too many of these small bottles just for private research unless they would have a long shelf life.