The Science Behind Nonalcoholic Spirits
If you’ve ever mixed water and oil, you know that not all liquids are miscible, or able to be mixed. Molecules with similar polarities tend to be miscible. Water, for example, is a polar molecule, while oil is nonpolar. Alcohol sits in between: it has both polar and nonpolar parts, meaning it can mix with either hydrophilic (polar) or hydrophobic (nonpolar) molecules. This is what makes alcohol so good at carrying flavors. Because the alcohol evaporates readily, drink makers can then distill the resulting mixture to remove most of the alcohol and concentrate the flavors. Each botanical is distilled using its own optimized individual process. In the case of Seedlip, the finished product contains a small amount of alcohol (still less than the 0.5 percent legal limit to not be considered alcoholic in the US), though other brands use different, completely alcohol-free methods. Another option is steam distillation, which extracts essential oils from the botanicals by passing steam through the ingredient. (CMU The Tartan)