How to flavour a spirit at home with essences

This is one of the easiest things in the whole homebrew section, and it is the one people are most surprised by. You buy a bottle of plain neutral spirit, you add a measured amount of an essence to it, you give it a shake and leave it a couple of days, and you have a gin or a spiced rum or a whisky style spirit that cost you a fraction of what the bottle on the shelf at the bottle shop does.

Worth being clear about the legal side first, because the two things get run together and they are not the same. Flavouring a spirit you bought needs no licence and no paperwork, it is the same act as putting cordial in water. Distilling your own alcohol at home is the part that needs an excise manufacturer licence from the ATO, and it is a separate conversation. Everything below starts with a bought bottle.

What an essence actually is

It is a concentrated flavouring, usually a blend of natural and nature identical flavour compounds in a carrier, built to land on the profile of a known style once it is diluted into neutral alcohol. It isn't magic and it isn't the same as ageing something in oak for 8 years, but the good ones are genuinely good, and a 50ml bottle flavours far more than one 750ml bottle of spirit.

That last bit is the thing people get wrong most often. They assume one bottle of essence goes into one bottle of vodka. Read the label instead, because the dose varies by brand and by product. The Still Spirits Original Whisky bottle, for instance, tells you to add 7.5ml per 750ml of 40 per cent alcohol, which is not much at all.

How to do it

1. Start with a clean neutral base. A plain vodka is the usual one, because it brings nothing of its own to the party. The cheapest bottle on the shelf will give you a rougher result than a decent one, so it is worth going one step up.
2. Measure the essence properly. This is the whole job, and eyeballing it is how you end up with something that tastes like a lolly.
3. Shake it properly rather than stirring it, so the flavour is even all the way through.
4. Leave it 1 to 3 days. Most essences taste sharp and a bit disjointed straight after mixing and settle down noticeably by day 3.
5. Taste before you commit it to a nice bottle, and write down what you did.

A few things worth knowing before your first one

• Dark styles are more forgiving than clear ones. A spiced rum or a bourbon style hides a rough base far better than a gin does.
• Adding sweetness changes it more than people expect. A small amount of sugar syrup rounds off a harsh edge, and a lot of it turns the whole thing into a liqueur.
• Blending two essences is a real technique and not a gimmick, but change one thing at a time or you learn nothing about which one did what.
• If you want the oak character on top of the essence, that is a separate job and it is done with oak chips or soakers rather than with more essence.

Shop related products

• Still Spirits Top Shelf Whiskey Essence 50ml. The standard whisky style, and a sensible first one.
• Still Spirits English Dry Gin Essence 50ml. A classic juniper forward dry gin.
• Still Spirits Spiced Rum Essence 50ml. The most forgiving of the lot if your base is rough.
• Still Spirits Citrus Vodka 50ml. Bright and citrusy, and the easiest one to drink over ice.

There are a lot more in the Edwards Essences collection and across the homebrew range.

Did you know we also stock the Samuel Willard's range in the shop, along with oak chips and oak soakers for adding barrel character on top of an essence. They aren't all on the website, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what is on the shelf.

If you want a hand picking one, Brewhilder is our homebrew helper, or come in and have a yak about it.

More from the brewing bench

• Making spirits at home, the five steps and where the law sits
• What fermentation actually does, and how to keep yeast happy

Still learning, and my labelling is a long way behind my mixing.

Cheers,
Candeece