Recipe development - it's thirsty work

The goal was simple – sessionable alternatives to the classics you already know. Light, refreshing, natural ingredients, and without the high calories or sugar content.

Drinks you’d reach for in the pub garden, chuck down round a mate’s gaff for a house-party, or the new go-to at a festival. Just without the bloating, chemical aftertaste or furry teeth feel.

It had to look the part too – something that looked as refreshing and natural as it tasted.  

Easy then – all natural, no high sugar content and handsomely refreshing.

So now we knew what we wanted, we had to figure out how to actually develop it. Once we’d graduated from the kitchen to the lab, it was time to ditch the guesswork and start getting structured in our feedback. We scored each of the iterations on:

Aroma – how fresh was it? Did it pack a punch? Did it make us want to dive headfirst into the glass?

Appearance – how’d it look in the glass? Were the bubbles fine or chunky? Was it the right level of cloudiness?

Taste – the big one: how was the sweetness, bitterness, sourness, ginger kick, lemon zing, acidity, and overall balance?

Mouthfeel – was it light or heavy? Was the level of carbonation there? And importantly, did it leave the sugary film on your teeth

Aftertaste – did it hang around in a good way or leave you wanting a chaser?

Overall impression – how did it all come together? Drinkable? Unique? And could you session it?

In the end we ran through four major iterations of our cloudy lemonade and seven of our ginger beer, each with 2-3 variations inside. That’s a lot of cans and a lot of evenings spent sampling – such a shame.

It was also a great way to get some feedback from our mates, early doors. Getting friends involved early helped massively in keeping us honest and not settling for anything but the best products. They got free grog; we got brutal honesty. Fair trade.