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Beyond the Burn: Getting Spicy with Spirits
From mild but aromatic bells to fiery chiles, peppers in spirits can be an outlet for a distiller’s creativity while delivering a wide range of distinctive flavors.
From mild but aromatic bells to fiery chiles, peppers in spirits can be an outlet for a distiller’s creativity while delivering a wide range of distinctive flavors. <a href="https://spiritsanddistilling.com/beyond-the-burn-getting-spicy-with-spirits/">Continue reading.</a>
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While distillers can produce a seemingly infinite variety of flavors via ingredients, fermentation, distillation, and aging, it’s often fruitful—in the pursuit of characterful spirits—to focus more narrowly on one spoke of the sensory wheel. One such path to impactful flavor is through an often-overlooked ingredient: peppers—and their capsaicin, the compound in chiles that we perceive as hot and spicy.
Distilling with peppers can be challenging. The variety of peppers commercially available is staggering, then there’s the decision of whether to include capsaicin—or, how much to include—in the bottled spirit.
Spicy spirits appear to be gaining traction, but they’re polarizing. Chiles themselves may have Scoville units, but for spirits, there is no agreed-upon metric to convey the exact level of spice consumers should expect. People’s sensitivities also vary widely, so ultimately, it’s hard to know what you’re going to get.
Exploring Peppers’ Not-So-Spicy Flavors
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Devon Trevathan is a freelance trade writer as well as the cofounder and co-owner of Liba Spirits, a nomadic distilling company. She has held a variety of positions related to beverage alcohol: bartender, server, writer, brand ambassador, marketing consultant, tour guide, wine manager. Follow her on Instagram @devlovesbev for updates on the journey of owning a distilling company but mostly pictures of her dog Gilberto.
