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Oxidation of spirit add ins?


PA_JoeDistiller

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Has anyone added juice or brewed coffee into their spirit as a natural flavoring? We are tossing some ideas to collaborate with local craft people, but my biggest concern is the oxidation of the additives. Does the alcohol basically suspend and preserve the juice/coffee/oil,sweet substance, or have you found there is quick degradation of quality?

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I make POMMEAU.

It is distilled apple cider to about 70%abv then diluted to 22% (some go to 18%) with fresh apple juice and aged in barrels for at least 12 months. Changes for the better with time.

Also a Coffee liqueur with brewed coffee and bottled at 22%.

Never noticed any stability problems, but it sells so fast I might not know. Lots of sugar in the coffee as well.

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We do a cold brew coffee liqueur, about 50 proof. Keeps a very big coffee flavor with no issues. Has some fines that settle to the bottom but not enough to worry. Adds additional richness and mouthfeel.

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Coffee liqueur at 60 proof here. Cold brew in above-bottling proof and filter at bottling, product has some sediment after being in the cooler for a month but hasn't gone off in any stress testing.

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Joe, I make 20+ small batch organic liqueurs and have found over the last five years or so that an alcohol content of 16%+ ABV and a Brix of 8%+ in a liqueur will actually act as a natural preservative as long as the flavor additives are reasonable stable. If you're careful you can also add a small amount of food grade citric acid as a stabilizing agent, it's especially useful with fruit liqueurs which can also turn out really cloudy without it. You only want to use about 0.5% by volume or else the flavor of the liqueur may be affected though.

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...................food grade citric acid as a stabilizing agent,......................about 0.5% by volume or else the flavor of the liqueur may be affected though.

That could be useful for my next fruit liqueur.

What form is your citric? mine is a powder so I do not understand the maths of 0.5% by volume.

Could you give more detail

Thanks

Pete

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  • 5 months later...

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