Dive Brief:
- Manufacturers are increasingly using alcoholic beverage flavors in a variety of food and beverage products in response to consumers' growing affinity for craft beer, regional wines, and artisanal spirits.
- This concept isn't new, but the combinations of flavors and products are becoming more complex as the cocktail movement takes hold in the U.S.
- It's not just about flavor — sometimes manufacturers can use certain ingredients to mimic the experience of drinking alcohol. These include mouthfeel enhancers that enable consumers to feel the familiar burn of each sip and a tingle that leaves the mouth feeling a little dry.
Dive Insight:
Keeping the flavor of a traditional alcoholic beverage authentic when a product generally calls for alcohol can be challenging on the product development side.
One way to accomplish these flavors is through reductions, whereby highly concentrated ingredients of alcohol are treated with heat under vacuum. This cooks off the alcohol and most of the water while the volatiles remain. Another way is through flavor extracts in liquid or dry form.
Beer-flavored Cuvee Coffee is a variety of cold-brewed coffee treated with nitrogren that offers the experience of drinking an ice cold beer in coffee form. Spirited flavors like whiskey and cognac also appear in beverages like soda and orange juice.
Staying on trend and financial incentives factor into the decision for creating non-alcoholic beverages and products with alcohol flavors. Using alcohol triggers a special tax from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and limits the market to those of legal drinking age. Copying the flavor without the potency, does not.