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Essentials oils for flavor.

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AngryNord

NewBee
Registered Member
Sep 1, 2011
14
0
0
Redmond Wa.
Hello everybody!

I have been making mead for some years and am not new, but am smart enough that I realize what I could know is far greater than what I have at my disposal now. And one of the things I have been contemplating is using essential oils in flavoring after a good ferment of a simple mead. I have read what I could and have not found much, either the Google hates me right now or it isn't explored much. I also looked at what is on this site and didn't find much. However if you don't ask, you can never know.

So I ask all there out there that care to respond if they have ever experimented with this method and what the results were. I know not to use just anything available, and will be making the oils myself. Did I miss something or is it a new territory I am exploring?

And of course I will post the results here good or bad if it turns out to be something not commonly done.
 
AngryNord said:
Hello everybody!

I have been making mead for some years and am not new, but am smart enough that I realize what I could know is far greater than what I have at my disposal now. And one of the things I have been contemplating is using essential oils in flavoring after a good ferment of a simple mead. I have read what I could and have not found much, either the Google hates me right now or it isn't explored much. I also looked at what is on this site and didn't find much. However if you don't ask, you can never know.

So I ask all there out there that care to respond if they have ever experimented with this method and what the results were. I know not to use just anything available, and will be making the oils myself. Did I miss something or is it a new territory I am exploring?

And of course I will post the results here good or bad if it turns out to be something not commonly done.
Click to expand...

Never tried essential oils, just extracts. However, I do know that a lot of people use essential oils in cooking - for candies, ice creams, in salads etc. I would, of course, make sure that the oil is one that you can ingest and add one drop at a time tasting as you go.
 
I don't think it's done a lot, but it certainly is practiced. Sean Paxton is a very vocal proponent of making and using extracts to do crazy things to your brews. If you hit on a good combination, I'd love to hear about it!
 
akueck said:
I don't think it's done a lot, but it certainly is practiced. Sean Paxton is a very vocal proponent of making and using extracts to do crazy things to your brews. If you hit on a good combination, I'd love to hear about it!
Click to expand...

Side Note:
Wow, Aaron, looks like your travel adventures are agreeing w/ you!
Love the new avatar.
 
Hello,
Has anyone had more experience with essential oils? I hope so! I want to use several specific flavors and I can only access them as essential oils. They're all food safe.
 
I have used EO's on cooking but as Guinlilly said one drop at a time. One drop of chamomile EO is equivalent to 30 cups of tea. but for mead it my differ.
 
Never used.

But that raised a doubt . Essential oil are not water soluble . In cooking we have fats, that retain the oil where they are soluble . Here is common to make meat with Rosmarinus officinalis or Laurus nobilis, the oil being retained by the meat.

They are soluble in alcohol, but the high dilution of this alcohol in mead, perhaps restrains the use of the essential oils ??
 
The flavor of hops is passed on to beer through the hop oils. So mutatis mutandis it should be possible to use essential oils in mead. The question then is: how much is required. I guess that would require experiments...
 
I would think the food-safe ones might be OK, but the problem I see is with your equipment - if you've got rubber airlocks or plastic mixing spoons, racking canes or hoses, it's possible that any essential oil that doesn't mix in because of the alcohol might damage your petroleum-based equipment. Some may be fine, but high concentrations of other things could get dicey. Or cause stuff to leach into your mead from normally inert plastics... just my $.02
 
Have you thought of using the flavor ingredients to e-liquid for vaping. I have not yet used them myself due to just recently starting this hobby but they are water based favors and you can get just about any flavor you can think of. I've been vaping for a few years now and have about 30 different flavors since i mix my own liquids.
 
I have used rose oil to make a rhodomel. It turned out to be good. You need such a small quantity of oil for the impact that it presents no problems for equipment. I don't recall if the oil was food-safe in my case, but the quantity was so tiny in relation to the size of the batch that I believe it was irrelevant. I figured it was as safe or safer than the possible rose-petals I have access to in my location.

Add them by the drop so you don't wind up overdosing it badly.


And my,... we have resurrected the dead with this thread haven't we.
 
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Since reading "Fragrant: The Secret Life of Scent " I'm really wondering what an ambergris mead would taste like? :)

I'm assuming it is so expensive that you would only buy the essential oil/alcohol with some of the ambergris dissolved(?) in it...
 
skunkboy said:
Since reading "Fragrant: The Secret Life of Scent " I'm really wondering what an ambergris mead would taste like? :)

I'm assuming it is so expensive that you would only buy the essential oil/alcohol with some of the ambergris dissolved(?) in it...
Click to expand...

It's worth thousands of dollars an ounce (and illegal to possess in the US).
 
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