Darcy S. ONeil

Recent Updates and a Unicum Bitter Recipe

As we move through summer, I've picked up the pace of video-making, so here is a quick update on some of the things happening around here.

The How to Make Chartreuse video has done well and it is good to see it trending up. For paid members, I have posted 32 recipes collected from different beverage and distillation manuals from the last 200 years, and it is quite a collection. Though none of these will ever be exactly like proper Chartreuse, they provide many details that can inspire you to make your own liqueurs. However, the recipes...

How to Make Chartreuse

Chartreuse has become a rare commodity, but it was scarce in the 1800s as well. Luckily, chemists and distillers documented many clone-type recipes (32 and counting posted below) for the prized elixir, allowing us to start making Chartreuse at home with some historical guidance.

Historical recipes are rarely exact, meaning they are just a starting point—an educated guess—and work will be required to tune the formula closer to the original. The 32 recipes below will allow you to understand the different compounds used to make Chartr...

Electrolyte Mineral Water Formula Sheet

Mineral waters, sometimes called electrolytes, originated from natural springs and volcanic mineral waters millennia ago. We still drink these waters today, just like Romans did thousands of years ago. However, we mostly drink them from bottles today under brand names like Perrier, Gerolsteiner, Apollinaris and Badoit water, though they are from the natural spring. One cool fact about the soda fountain was that they originally had a thriving business selling mineral waters and even had formulas to replicate natural spring water mineral conte...

What Alcohol Percent to Use for Extracts & Essences

What type of solvent or alcohol by volume (abv) for what extract/essence is a common question, so let me answer it as best I can. Technically, there is no one solution that works for everything, but if you want the simple answer, I'd suggest that when in doubt, go with 60% to 65% alcohol (ethanol).

The real answer is more complex and has a lot to do with the chemistry of the compounds in the essential oils and herbs/spices you are extracting. Different compounds require different alcohol percentages, and some require no alcohol at all....

Tarhun Formula Sheet

When I made this video I said there was going to be an formula sheet available, but for some reason I never got around to it until now. So if you've been looking for the written formula, here it is. If you have questions, let me know.

Belfast Ginger Ale Info Sheet

Since I'll be doing a follow-up video on the Ginger Ale recipe, with a comparison between the 2+-year-old aged version I originally made and the new "fresh make" sample, I decided to put an info sheet with all the recipe details in order. For the video, I'll be comparing the original recipe, but the recipe in this info sheet has a few improvements and modifications.

This is one of the few times that an info sheet will be free to everyone because many people on the free Patreon level have probably never seen the detail I put into making...

April 2024 Update: Back in the Saddle

Here are some quick updates about the course, the denial-of-service attack and a few resources to help you on your beverage development journey.

Now that the Flavour & Beverage Development course is running smoothly and discounts have been emailed out, it is time to get back to making general video content and info sheets. If you didn't receive one and plan to take the course, let me know, as the discount is the amount you've put i...

Course Launch & Discount Codes (Updated)

The course is ready to go, but a couple of notes. If you are in a rush and want to jump on the course right away, send me a message here or at dso@artofdrink.com for your Patreon discount code. I will be sending them out to active users this week, but there are a lot of codes to generate, so if you are chomping at the bit, I'll get those out first.

Flavour & Beverage Development 

This morning, there was a DDOS attack on the s...

Quick Update: Course & Beyond

The Flavour Development for Beverages course is almost complete. It should be available by next Monday, March 18, subject to change. It consists of 33 lessons, 30 with videos, and 4 quizzes. I need to redo a video on Emulsions to explain things better, specifically how to use them in beverages. This area can be vital if you lack access to high-proof alcohol. 

Some of the delays in getting the course out have been implementing the website, which you can check out at 2024-03-10 13:37:16 +0000 UTC View Post

Flavour Development for Beverages

The course is pretty much complete. I'm just going through it and adding additional information in the text sections, and there might be one video that needs a reshoot just because it needs to be clearer. It will be released in the first week of March. I'm taking a quick five-day break, starting Friday, and I didn't want to release the course just as I'm leaving. There are always a few hiccups, so I'd prefer to be available to answer questions and troubleshoot things.

The Goal of the Course

Beverage science is a big topic; you ...

Preview: Flavour & Beverage Development Course

This is a quick update to show you the curriculum I've assembled for the flavour and beverage development course. It should be done in the next two weeks, as there are only six more videos to make. And yes, most of these lessons are video-based, and there will be about 30 videos in total, with associated text and other reference material. It is a comprehensive start to developing a flavour and creating a beverage.

This course aims to allow you to create your flavour without hiring a consultant. The fact is beverage development consulta...

January 2024 Update

Though things may seem quiet here, a lot of work is going on in the background to make this Patreon account better for you. I'm still currently a "one-man show," so everything that gets done on Patreon, YouTube and the websites is done by myself, which means things go slower than I want, but there is some excellent progress, so let me share that with you.

1. Online Flavour & Beverage Development Course

This has been the focus for most of January 2024, and the course goal is to fill a significant knowledge gap in how to work...

Root Beer: Video Feedback?

I want your opinion. Sometimes, I spend a couple of days making a video, edit it, and then watch it and decide the video isn't good enough. That doesn't mean the content isn't good, it just means if I publish it on YouTube, it won't get the engagement because I'm trying to take a complex topic and put it into a space where most people want entertainment. Low engagement on a video gets it exiled to the YouTube island of forgotten videos. This is one of those videos. It is not fully edited (no text or titles or b-roll) just the basic talking t...

Root Beer, Sassafras and Cancer

Root beer has a long history; one of the key ingredients was sassafras, which contained safrole. The chemical safrole was found to be carcinogenic in the 1960s and was banned from commercial use. Many people seem not to believe this, based on erroneous posting on Internet forums, so I've done a walk-through on the science behind why sassafras is considered carcinogenic.

I also compare a modern substitute, sassafras acetate, to a sassafras extract. The great thing about the alternative is that it does not have any of the health issues ...

Root Beer Formulation Sheet

Fact: almost all sources on the internet get root beer wrong. Time has consolidated a once broad and interesting category of drinks into one generic liquid and a few minor sidekicks. There is much information to share. For starters, there are many dozens—possibly nearly one hundred—old root beer recipes available in old soda manuals and journals, though many of them do not go by the name "root beer," they were called meads, sassafras, pipsissewa, birch and spruce beer as well as Otaki, Ottawa, Columbian, Peruvian beers, Aralia and Sarine...

Hot Drops | Patreon Exclusive

One of the missing links in low and no-alcohol beverages is the sensation from alcohol, the burn or heat as it is often called. Back in the early 1800s, a product nicknamed Hot Drops was added to root beer to give it some kick. Hot Drops was actually No.6 Rheumatic Drops which was a simple mixture of myrrh, cayenne pepper and alcohol and was dosed at a low level, usually a teaspoon to give a drink some bite.  In this video I will show you how to make the original formula for Hot Drops and in future videos I will be adding it some root b...

How to Prototype a Flavour

There is an easy way to combine flavours without making hundreds of litres worth of flavour essence. In fact, with this method, a few drops of your flavour compounds can be used many times over to combine aromas and prototype a flavour combination before you invest in making an essence.

The way to do it, as this video will demonstrate, is to create 1% solutions of your flavour compounds and then use scent test strips to combine the flavours. This method gives you a rough approximation of what the end result will be, though it may requi...

Flavour Zone

As we get more into beverage formulations, I decided there needed to be a better way to share information, recipes and documents. Patreon is great for linear things like podcasts but not so great for the stuff I do, so I put together a website that can do that, and it works seamlessly with Patreon.

The site is called Flavour Zone (https://flavour.zone), and it will be a central point for documentation as I put together recipes, ingredient details, safety documents, book lists...

Quick Carbonation Parts List

Here is the list of parts for the rapid carbonation setup. All of the parts are in this list are good for 90 psi of pressure. If you are only pressurizing to 30 or 40 psi, you can use a Blichmann Quickcarb device, it does an okay job at low pressure. The setup I have here will work better for higher volumes of water or higher pressures.

I will try to get someone to do a sketch of the setup, but I have roughly grouped the parts below into the sec...

How to Make Tonic Water, and Why You Probably Shouldn't

Tonic water has a long history, first as a medicine to fight malaria, but it morphed into a popular cocktail when mixed with gin, hence the Gin & Tonic. Many people have asked me about making their own tonic water, and it can be done, but some important issues need to be discussed before you embark on your homemade tonic water recipe. Specifically, the main flavour-providing compound, quinine, can interact with many drugs and there are legal limits on how much quinine can go into tonic water (83 mg/L) so to formulate your own tonic, you ...

Soda as a Beverage Business

Obviously, many people are interested in making a beverage and turning it into a business. It's probably the number one question I get asked. Getting a product to market is fairly easy, though there are a lot of knowledge gaps that prevent people from going the distance. But do know it is probably easier than you think and the biggest hurdle is marketing and not necessarily product development.

A perfect example of that is Three Cents Soda, launched in Greece approximately 10 years ago and in 2023 was bought by Coca-Cola for a cool 45 ...

Info Sheet: Zero Calorie Simple Syrup

A bit delayed but the information/instruction sheet for the Zero Calorie Simple Syrup video is here (see PDF attachment below). The instructions include the formula for each individual component and then the final mixture to preserve the syrup. 

If you are making this syrup and using it quickly, less than a week, you can skip the preservatives and just keep it in the fridge, though adjusting the pH to 4.0 using the buffer mixture is still helpful a...

Ad Free Videos?

Who is interested in ad-free videos (in parallel with YouTube posts)? YouTube is super convenient, but the number of ads has increased over the past year, creating a less-than-ideal learning environment. Think of a college professor stopping a lesson to read a 30-second ad placement every few minutes.

I have found a solution (bunny.net) that meets all the price, quality (4K) and delivery requirements and it would be paid tiers only just because it does have an ass...

Easy Flavour Emulsions (Patreon Exclusive)

In the world of flavours, emulsions are king. The problem up until now for anyone without a corporate budget is that making a stable micro-emulsion can be prohibitively expensive or require alcohol. This method solves both issues, opening the world of flavours to hobbyists, bartenders and aspiring product developers and only requires 4 ingredients and a hot plate stirrer. No blender or magnesium carbonate is required either.

This video and technique are based on a 2011 research paper titled "Formation of Flavor Oil Microemulsions, Nano...

Flavour Emulsions

When it comes to making water-based flavours, it is well known that oil and water do not mix, unless you emulsify them. And that is what this video is about, and if you have asked about making flavours (essences) without using alcohol, this is the starting point.

If you've watched the video on How to Make an Essence, this DIY Flavour Emulsion video will effectively create the same flavour concentrate, but without alcohol. And once you have made it, you will use it to make syrups, just like using an essence.

Important Poin...