Why homemade peach schnapps tastes artificial

Why a homemade peach schnapps tastes artificial, and what to do about it

This is the complaint I hear more than any other about essence liqueurs. You mix it up and pour one, and it tastes like a lolly rather than a drink. It's sweet and one-note and a bit chemical on the back end. The usual conclusion is that the essence is no good, when most of the time the essence is fine and something around it has gone wrong.

There are three things that cause it and not one of them is the bottle.

One. The base spirit is doing more than you think

A flavouring sits on top of whatever you put it in. If your neutral came off the still harsh, or you cut too wide and took some of the tails with it, that harshness is still in there under the peach. Your brain reads the combination of a sweet fruit note and a rough spirit as fake, because nothing in nature tastes like that.

So the fix sits upstream of the essence. Run your cuts tighter and filter through carbon, and taste the base on its own before you flavour anything at all. If the neutral is unpleasant by itself then no essence is going to rescue it.

Two. It's too sweet, and sweetness is what reads as fake

Still Spirits Peach Schnapps essence is made to be mixed with a sugar base, and the amount of sugar you put in is the single biggest lever you have. Too much and the fruit stops tasting like fruit. It's the same reason a tinned peach doesn't taste as much like a peach as a peach does.

Using a proper base such as Still Spirits Schnapps Base or Liqueur Base A gets you consistency, which matters if you want the next batch to taste like this one. But there's nothing stopping you holding a bit back the first time and adding more later. You can always put sugar in. You can't take it out.

Three. You drank it too early

A freshly mixed liqueur tastes like its parts. The alcohol sits separately from the flavour and the sugar sits separately again, and the whole thing comes across as sharper and more synthetic than it will in a couple of days. Give it 24 to 48 hours somewhere dark and it'll settle down a lot.

This is the cheapest fix on the list and the one most people skip, because the bottle is right there and it's finished. Leave it anyway.

How to tell which one is your problem

Pour a small measure of your base spirit neat and taste it. If that's rough, problem one. If the base is clean but the drink is cloying, problem two. If it's clean and not especially sweet but still tastes a bit thin and separate, it's just young and you want to wait.

Once it's right, peach schnapps does a lot of work. Put it in a flute with something sparkling, or over ice with soda and a wedge of lime. It also goes through a summer dessert without much argument.

The licence bit, said plainly

Owning a still is legal in Australia and so is buying one from us, and that's where a lot of posts stop. Distilling spirits at home needs an excise manufacturer licence from the ATO, and sorting that out is on you before you run anything through it. Flavouring a bought base spirit with an essence is a different job again and it doesn't need a licence at all.

Shop related products

• Still Spirits Peach Schnapps essence 50ml. The peach flavouring itself.
• Still Spirits Schnapps Base 300g. The sugar side, measured rather than guessed.
• Still Spirits Liqueur Base A. The other way to build the sweetness and the body.
• Still Spirits Pear Schnapps 50ML. Same family, a softer fruit if peach is too obvious for you.

Did you know we also keep carbon, filter gear and a good part of the spirits range in the shop without it ever appearing online. Ring us on (08) 8536 4333 and we'll check the shelf for you.

Brewhilder is our homebrew adviser if you want to work through a batch that came out wrong, and otherwise just come in and tell us what happened.

There's more in the Still Spirits range and across the wider homebrew section.

Read next

• Why Still Spirits Peach Schnapps belongs in your bar
• Why the liqueur base matters more than the essence
• How spirit essences work, and how to pick the right one

I'm impatient with the resting part, so I've tasted more young batches than anyone really needs to.

Cheers,
Candeece

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