FIELD NOTES  ·  NON-ALCOHOLIC SPIRITS

Not all non-alcoholic spirits are made the same way. Some are distilled. Some are extracts. Some are off-the-shelf flavouring agents in water. The difference matters, for how they taste, how they perform in a drink, and what you're actually buying. This is a plain-language breakdown, written from inside the process.

By Tim Triggs, founder of ALTD Spirits and No & Low Drinks Co.  ·  5 min read

I've spent years of my life sitting in front of a hand-hammered copper still, watching it slowly drip. That's not a metaphor. That is what hydrosol production looks like in practice: slow, particular, and completely absorbing once it gets hold of you.

I've also distilled Cherry Ripes and Crunchies from the service station, just to see what would happen. Both are surprisingly good, for the record.

I mention this because the question I get asked more than almost any other is: what actually makes a non-alcoholic spirit a spirit? It's a question worth taking seriously, because the honest answer is that the category covers a wide range of production methods, and not all of them are equivalent.

Here's how the main approaches work, what each one produces, and how to tell them apart.

Distillation and hydrosols

Traditional spirits are made by distilling a fermented liquid to concentrate the alcohol. Non-alcoholic spirits can't do that, obviously, but distillation is still one of the most valuable tools available.

When you distill botanical material with water, what comes out the other end is called a hydrosol. It's the water-soluble aromatic compounds from the plant, carried through the still and condensed back into liquid form. No alcohol. But genuine flavour, captured through heat and pressure and time.

Hydrosols are remarkable things. Rose hydrosol, juniper hydrosol, lavender hydrosol. Each one carries the aromatic character of the source material in a way that is difficult to replicate through other means. The flavour is integrated. Rounded. It behaves like something that was made, not assembled.

The limitation is that hydrosols are subtle. They can only go so far on their own, and producing them in volume takes significant time and equipment. For a commercial product to be built entirely on hydrosol distillation, you need a lot of still time and a clear sense of what you're trying to achieve.

At ALTD Spirits, distillation has always been the foundation. That commitment comes from genuine belief in what it produces, not as a marketing position.

Cold-press and CO2 extraction

Extraction is different from distillation. Rather than using heat and steam to capture aromatic compounds, extraction uses pressure or solvents to pull flavour directly from the source material.

Cold-press extraction is exactly what it sounds like: pressing botanical material to release its oils and aromatic compounds without heat. It's commonly used for citrus, where the oils live in the peel and heat would damage them. A cold-pressed yuzu extract tastes genuinely of yuzu in a way that a heat-processed version often doesn't.

CO2 extraction uses pressurised carbon dioxide as a solvent to pull specific compounds from botanicals. It's precise and produces concentrated extracts with a clean flavour profile. It's used in perfumery and food production as well as drinks, and the results can be excellent when the source material is good.

Both methods produce ingredients rather than finished products. The skill is in how you use them, what you combine them with, and in what proportions.

Flavour building and what it means in practice

Most non-alcoholic spirits are not made from a single production method. They're built from a combination: distilled hydrosols as the base, with cold-pressed or CO2 extracts added to bring specific character, and sometimes bitters or tinctures made in-house to add depth and complexity.

This is where the craft lives. Anyone can buy a gin flavour compound and put it in water. Getting a drink to behave like a spirit, to have weight and progression and a finish, requires understanding how the components interact and being willing to work through many iterations to get there.

I've made bitters in my kitchen. I've infused botanicals for weeks to get a specific note right. I've reformulated products multiple times because the first version was technically correct but didn't feel right to drink. That process is what separates a well-made non-alcoholic spirit from one that tastes like flavoured water.

Off-the-shelf flavours and why transparency matters

There is a fourth approach, and it's worth naming directly: buying flavour compounds from a supplier and adding them to water or a neutral base. This is legal, and it produces drinks that can taste reasonably good. It is also a very different thing from the methods above.

The issue isn't that this approach exists. The issue is when it's obscured. When a brand implies distillation without doing any, or uses craft language around a product that was assembled from catalogue ingredients, that's a problem for the whole category.

Consumers deserve to know what they're buying. The non-alcoholic spirits space is still young enough that trust is being built in real time. Misrepresentation now makes that harder for everyone.

If a product is made with purchased flavours, that's fine. Say so. Let people decide whether it matters to them. For some occasions and budgets, it might not. But don't claim craft that isn't there.

The shelf life problem that alcoholic spirits don't have

Alcohol is a natural preservative. A bottle of gin can sit open on a shelf for years without spoiling. Non-alcoholic spirits don't have that protection, which creates a preservation challenge that shapes every formulation decision.

Most non-alcoholic spirits use some combination of citric acid, natural preservatives, and careful pH management to extend shelf life. Some use small amounts of sugar. Some use packaging that limits oxygen exposure.

None of these are shortcuts. They're necessary parts of making a product that is safe, stable and still tastes good six months after it's opened. The question is how they're used, whether they're doing their job cleanly or whether they're masking other problems in the formulation.

Shelf life testing is one of the least glamorous parts of drink development. It's also one of the most important, and one of the most commonly underestimated by first-time producers.

How to read a label

You can tell quite a lot about how a non-alcoholic spirit was made from its label, if you know what to look for.

Distilled: If a product was made using distillation, the word should appear somewhere, either in the description or the ingredient list. 'Distilled botanicals' or 'hydrosol' are positive signals.

Natural flavours: This term covers a wide range in Australia. It can mean cold-pressed extracts, CO2 extracts, or purchased flavour compounds. It doesn't tell you how they were made or where they came from.

Flavours (without 'natural'): Usually means synthetic or purchased flavour compounds. Not necessarily bad, but worth knowing.

Long ingredient lists with unfamiliar numbers: Preservatives, stabilisers and colour additives. Again, not automatically a problem, but worth comparing to products with cleaner lists.

The absence of any production information: If a brand doesn't mention how the product was made anywhere on the label or website, that's usually a signal.

On the excise question

A few years ago, articles appeared criticising the non-alcoholic spirits industry for not paying excise, the tax levied on alcoholic beverages. The implication was that we were somehow deceiving consumers or free-riding on the category.

This criticism misses the point. Non-alcoholic spirits don't pay alcohol excise because they don't contain alcohol. The absence of excise reflects the absence of the thing being taxed, not a lack of legitimacy or value.

Non-alcoholic spirits aren't merely alcohol-free versions of alcoholic drinks. They're their own category, built differently, for different reasons, for people who have made a deliberate choice about what they want to drink. The tax structure reflects that accurately.

The short version

Distillation produces hydrosols: genuine flavour from botanical material, captured through heat, pressure and time. It's the foundation of the ALTD Spirits range.

Extraction pulls flavour directly from botanicals using pressure or CO2. Precise and high quality when done well.

Flavour building combines these elements with bitters, tinctures and other crafted components. The skill is in the combination.

Off-the-shelf flavours are a shortcut. They can produce acceptable results. They are not the same thing as the above, and honest labelling should reflect that.

Shelf life is a real challenge that shapes every formulation decision. How a brand handles it tells you something about how seriously they take the product.

 

The category is still young. The standards are still being established. The best thing anyone in it can do is be clear about how their products are made and let the work speak.

 

Tim Triggs

Founder, ALTD Spirits and No & Low Drinks Co.