Dehydrated Liqueur Flavor Pills and Champagne Cocktails
April 18, 2012
As an ongoing part of my Solid Liquids Project, I have dehydrated various liqueurs into flavored powders and am now experimenting with new ways to use them.
In yesterday's post I described how I bought a pill press to make tablets out of the liqueurs.
I started with Angostura bitters, but then made additional "flavor pills" out of Campari, Midori, and Aperol.
I was thinking that these would be fun flavor enhancers for drinks, especially champagne drinks.
A cool presentation might be to give a guest a glass of champagne and a variety of flavor enhancers from which to choose. To make it extra fun, I put some in a pill box.
Then you pick your pill and add it to the sparkling wine. It fizzes up nicely.
And eventually it breaks down and colors and flavors the drink.
It does take several minutes for the flavor to become noticeable in the champagne. I tried to speed up the process by experimenting with adding baking powder to the mix, but this affected the flavor of the drink.
Thus this works best with the most strongly flavored liqueurs, and using rather large sized flavor pill tablets. It could also be a fun addition to hot tea.
Sometime soon I'll do some experimenting (I've run out of sparkling wine for now) to see which flavors work best in this format.
I hope this inspires some fun experimenting!
They would dissolve more quickly if you used several small pills rather than one large one.
Posted by: Evan | April 18, 2012 at 02:36 PM
LOVE! What a brilliant idea. When can i buy these pills :)
Posted by: Jacky | April 18, 2012 at 05:18 PM
What about using the dehydrated Campari to rim a glass?
Posted by: Ian | April 19, 2012 at 12:40 AM
That's awesome!
Are you shipping to Greece?
Posted by: Kostas | April 19, 2012 at 03:23 AM
I love this idea, and plan to dehydrated stuff this very weekend ;)
I'm amazed you resisted stirring the pill to get it to dissolve quicker, but then anyone who has seen old women using tiny silver champagne whips to beat the bubbles out of the bubbly knows the result.
Posted by: Andrea | April 19, 2012 at 06:25 AM
You're right. I should try that.
Posted by: Camper English | April 19, 2012 at 09:30 AM
That's the most common use - I'm searching for some others. All my experiments in this project are here:http://www.alcademics.com/solid-liquids-project-index.html
Posted by: Camper English | April 19, 2012 at 09:32 AM
I'm not shipping anywhere yet - feel free to experiment and improve!
Posted by: Camper English | April 19, 2012 at 09:32 AM
Yes apparently there are non-flavored substances that help things dissolve faster, used in pills. I might look into finding some of those eventually.
Posted by: Camper English | April 19, 2012 at 09:33 AM
Wow, that sure is something else. Easily could be a huge trend in bars and restaurants. The pricing possibilities are ridonkulous. This is a good blog, and I used to enjoy your 'chimes' a lot. I wish I had known about you before I was challenged to make a cocktail recipe using tootsie rolls as one of the ingredients.
I ended up making a Tootsie Roll shot 'glass.' I got it to work, but the T-rolls weren't easy to manipulate. Overall, for a blind challenge, it turned out well and was a tasty drink. I remember seeing your chime.in profile and thinking to myself that if this guy gives me an ingredient challenge, I'm toast.
Thanks for sharing those 'bubbly-bombs' Very cool, dude.
Cheers!
Posted by: lvfrankg | April 20, 2012 at 01:18 AM
What about mixing in unflavored Pop Rocks to the powder before putting it in the pill press? This may not directly dissolve the mixture faster, but it could have the effect of breaking up the pill, creating more surface area and result in a quicker dissolve.
Posted by: Andrew | April 20, 2012 at 07:45 AM
Another great idea-thanks!
Posted by: Camper English | April 21, 2012 at 07:46 PM
Perhaps there are other carbonic acids than baking powder, which don't influence the taste? And aren't toxic either.
Posted by: Camiel | April 23, 2012 at 11:35 AM
Where did you find the pill press?
Posted by: Eli | January 27, 2024 at 12:42 PM
@Eli - It's been so long I'm not positive but I think it was on EBay. You could also check etsy.
Posted by: Camper English | January 27, 2024 at 12:46 PM