7X Cola spirit?

Sweetened spirits with various flavors

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Steve Broady
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7X Cola spirit?

Post by Steve Broady »

I was watching gin a video the other day where someone tried to recreate the original Coca-Cola recipe. The ingredients caught my attention, because they seemed to resemble a gin recipe (minus the juniper).
10 grams of orange peel
10 grams of lemon peel
4 grams of cinnamon
1 gram of nutmeg
1 gram of coriander seed

and lastly 4 grams of neroli or bitter orange, but I couldn't find any so I did some research and found that kaffir lime leaves are comprised 80% of neroli compounds so I used 4 grams of them instead.
https://www.flavorlab.xyz/recipes/cola

It got me wondering, has anyone tried using a recipe like this to make a spirit? My first thought would be to make the 7X infusion and distill it like gin, and then to sweeten and color much like the original recipe. Or, leave it unsweetened and treat it like gin.
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Re: 7X Cola spirit?

Post by PLAYMP »

Love this idea, I have a pretty healthy stock of neutral and am looking for inspiration and this seems like an awesome chance to experiment.

I have heard of some distiller trying to recreate a botanical spirit using Dr. Pepper ingredients but the sky is really the limit, you could do a classic root beer too.
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Re: 7X Cola spirit?

Post by Bradster68 »

Hmmm. I like the gin style idea.That'd be supper easy to try like an Odins run, add to neutral and voila.

Only guessing but I'm sure "someone" has made a gin with various ingredients and left out the juniper berries. No?
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Re: 7X Cola spirit?

Post by PLAYMP »

Bradster68 wrote: Fri Aug 11, 2023 3:30 pm Only guessing but I'm sure "someone" has made a gin with various ingredients and left out the juniper berries. No?
It feels like the trend in gin right now is to be really light on the juniper. Like distillers don’t want to be tethered to it but know it needs to be there for marketing reasons. Fortunately the perks of hobby distilling is we don’t have to be bound by such things.

If you look at the old French distillation manuals you’ll see all sorts of botanical spirits. Over time I guess juniper just knew the right people and it really became the defacto distilled botanical beverage.
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Re: 7X Cola spirit?

Post by Bradster68 »

PLAYMP wrote: Fri Aug 11, 2023 4:45 pm
Bradster68 wrote: Fri Aug 11, 2023 3:30 pm Only guessing but I'm sure "someone" has made a gin with various ingredients and left out the juniper berries. No?
It feels like the trend in gin right now is to be really light on the juniper. Like distillers don’t want to be tethered to it but know it needs to be there for marketing reasons. Fortunately the perks of hobby distilling is we don’t have to be bound by such things.

If you look at the old French distillation manuals you’ll see all sorts of botanical spirits. Over time I guess juniper just knew the right people and it really became the defacto distilled botanical beverage.
Absolutely. And gin itself is an acquired taste. So maybe it is the juniper berries that have been admired by a certain crowd.
Lots of new recipes out there to try
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Re: 7X Cola spirit?

Post by NZChris »

Just do it.

I make a lot of different products in my mini stills, including gin.
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Re: 7X Cola spirit?

Post by tombombadil »

Cola should have kola nut?
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Re: 7X Cola spirit?

Post by NZChris »

tombombadil wrote: Fri Aug 11, 2023 9:21 pm Cola should have kola nut?
Historically, yes. Just because modern manufacturers no longer use kola nut doesn't mean that you shouldn't, especially if you have it available or grow it.
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Re: 7X Cola spirit?

Post by still_stirrin »

tombombadil wrote: Fri Aug 11, 2023 9:21 pm Cola should have kola nut?
Kola nuts???

All I have are twool nuts —> “two ol’ nuts”! :-)
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Re: 7X Cola spirit?

Post by LordL »

still_stirrin wrote: Sat Aug 12, 2023 6:17 am
tombombadil wrote: Fri Aug 11, 2023 9:21 pm Cola should have kola nut?
Kola nuts???

All I have are twool nuts —> “two ol’ nuts”! :-)
10 000 cola nuts, wrapped in brown paper.
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Re: 7X Cola spirit?

Post by contrahead »

tombombadil wrote: Fri Aug 11, 2023 9:21 pm Cola should have kola nut?
screenshot83b.jpg

Quoting myself:

_ _ _"The Kola nut is rich in caffeine and theobromine. Africans were chewing the flavorful and stimulating tree nuts long before Coca-Cola was ever invented. “Cola” is the proper scientific name of the plant “Genus” to which these nuts belong. The genus was originally thought to be closely related to the South American cocoa (chocolate bean), but now the two are placed in different subfamilies.
_ _ _While Kola nut seeds are harvested primarily from the Cola acuminata and Cola nitida species today, there are 100 to 125 other species of the Cola genus within the African tropical forest, with which they might be confused.
_ _ _Coca-Cola came about in 1886 when a pharmacist mixed sugar and carbonated water with caffeine extracted from African kola nuts and cocaine extracted from South American coca leaves. Fresh coca leaves were used in the beverage's syrup until 1903; after that the cocaine alkaloid was removed, but "spent" coca leaves or cocaine-free coca leaf extract continued to be used as flavoring".
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Re: 7X Cola spirit?

Post by Dougmatt »

Without the juniper, is it gin or a flavored vodka? Just wondering.

Edit: seems like juniper is required to be called Gin. https://theginisin.com/botanicals-list/ ... 0as%20gins.
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Re: 7X Cola spirit?

Post by Steve Broady »

Dougmatt wrote: Wed Aug 16, 2023 1:12 am Without the juniper, is it gin or a flavored vodka? Just wondering.

Edit: seems like juniper is required to be called Gin. https://theginisin.com/botanicals-list/ ... 0as%20gins.
I wouldn’t call it a gin, Dougmatt. I just wondered about following that botanical bill with the same method as one would make gin. Or, add juniper and it looks like a viable gin recipe to me.
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Re: 7X Cola spirit?

Post by NZChris »

If you make it at 7X essence strength, you have plenty of options to try and might even settle on more than one type of finished product for the liquor cabinet.

A 7X juniper essence could be used to blend with it for gin experiments.

Naming can be a problem. Some of the products I make in my small stills don't really have names that I can borrow from the drinks that inspired them. Where there are simple rules, (like gin has to contain juniper), I abide by them. Fortunately, very few people get to taste my botanical heavy experiments, so I don't often have to explain an unusual name or method.
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