Before you compose a new recipe there are a couple of things to keep in consideration. The main rule is that the recipe has to be simple, which is what we call minimalism. It is also very important to know that if you use a base spirit (rum, vodka, or gin) there can only be one.
Everybody will have to use his/her creativity to develop a successful drink, so the subjects in this chapter should be used as guideline only.
Simply said, we speak about "non accent" flavours and "accent" flavours. The object is to create a balanced Round end result. To illustrate this in a simple way, I have chosen for a geometrical picture.
The ingredients used will have to fit in the circle, which illustrates the creation.
The easiest way to understand this is to use only round flavours which always will fit simply in the circle, but which will also produce a simple and flat flavour. But perhaps as "bartender/artist", we would want to build in an exciting detail, which will make the customer think:" What is that underlying flavour?!"
In this way the size of the geometrical figure corresponds to the quantity of the drink and the shape of the figure illustrates the taste. We can talk of sharp " " and round " " taste patterns.
In this way the following liqueurs will categories as non-accent flavours: peach, banana, melon, strawberry. However crème de menthe, coconut and amaretto are true accent flavours. The same is applicable to spirits: rum and vodka are true non-accent flavours, whereas a character-full gin is a definite accent flavour.
Let's analyse the following picture with this information:
The creation is composed with five liqueurs, with a main flavour of peach (in the geometrical figure this covers the biggest space and is round in flavour). The second flavour is banana with an underlying hint of apricot.
In this recipe I have chosen amaretto as the accent flavour, to illustrate that an accent flavour can be a sweet ingredient. If you look at the animation you can see that if we would use the same amount of Amaretto as the other flavours, part of the Amaretto segment will fall outside the composition.
