Working with Alcohol : Dosage Guidelines

When using alcohol to flavour a product, using the correct dosage is critical to achieve a well balanced end product. The key objective is to bring out the unique flavour of the particular alcohol being added without the alcohol overpowering the other flavours.

To ensure that you achieve a perfect balance of flavours in your product, we have made some suggestions regarding the most harmonious flavour combinations for our main alcohol brands. Please refer to our section on Perfect Partners.

We have also given below some guidelines on our recommended dose for different food categories. Please note that the dosage given below refers to the volume of spirit or liqueur in the product. The final alcohol percentage will depend on the strength of the spirit or liqueur.

Food	Dosage	Notes
Butter & Cream	7-8%	This level of alcohol will give a full and distinctive flavour which is especially important at Christmas.
Ganache & Chocolate	9-10%	Chocolate has a strong flavour of its own so a slightly higher alcohol percentage is required.
Ice Cream & Sorbet	5-6%	The precise dosage used in ice cream will depend on whether the alcohol is added into the ice cream base itself, or incorporated through a sauce or alcohol soaked inclusions. If there are many other flavours in the ice cream, then a slightly higher dosage may be required.
Pâté	5-6%	Savoury dishes such as pâté work very well with alcohol as there will be no loss of alcohol flavour due to cooking.
Xmas Puddings & Mince Pies	7-8%	In a fruit cake, it is best to marinate the fruits in the alcohol and to inject alcohol into the cake after baking. If incorporated into the cake mix, much of the alcohol flavour will be lost through evaporation during baking

Remember that to qualify for duty relief, you will have to satisfy the following requirements:

Chocolate - should contain less than 8.5 litres of pure alcohol per 100kgs of chocolate (8.5% alcohol content)
Other foods - should contain less than 5 litres of pure alcohol per 100kgs of final product (5% alcohol content)

As an example, if you are using 10% of Cointreau (60%) concentrate in a chocolate, the pure alcohol content of the chocolate will be 10% x 60%, or 6%.