StillSmart

Being tight!! have been extending my experiments and have come up with some genuine tasting spirits.

1st - Southern comfort - used 200mls genuine Southern comfort - 4 good teaspoons of Brown sugar dissolved - top up to 70cl with base spirit and shake till completely dissolved - give guests to blind taste and only 1 could guess the real thing (same colour due to the brown sugar and just as syrupy)
2nd - Cointreau - used 250ml and 5 good teaspoons of white sugar and top up with base spirit to 70cl - given guests a blind taste and only 2 said they could notice the difference - smell was identical - taste was a bit less syrupy but the spirit was slightly cloudy.

I think the way forward on this one is to warm a small amount up to dissolve the sugar first.
Have also tried this with Whisky and find it tastes better than the whisky flavourings.
Taking 200mls out of the genuine bottles makes it cheaper than the flavourings and extends the Christmas booze as some people will not drink home brew but when put in a nice decanter see no difference!!!

I will be very interested to read from fellow \'tight-wads\" about using the \"genuine\" stuff as the essence - problem in buying the genuine bottle is that I\'ll have to make up 3 or 4 700ml bottles at the same time, otherwise I might end up drinking the genuine stuff!

Even if you do use essences, a small amount (10% or so) of the genuine stuff does help to fool the palate - give it a try if you haven\'t already, it\'s certainly an interesting experiment!