Post #772929 by Tiki Drifter on Mon, Feb 13, 2017 4:08 PM

After a good ketogenic January, I've been thinking more about low carb tiki drinks. In considering the the various brands of sugar substitutes and the option of making your own infused syrups and whatnot, I wonder about the role these ingredients play in each cocktail. I'm not a mixologist by any means, but it occurred to me that there are 3 factors:

• sweet taste
• texture
• volume (dilution, ratio, etc.)

Taste is going to just based on the particular artificial sweetener, and we're all going to have a personal preference there. But texture and volume matter too, which is why we can't just only add drops or packets to the recipe.
Texture is that "syrup" quality, probably most obvious with honey. The Torani sugar-free Orgeat has xanthan gum in it, which is a thickener ... so I'm wondering about making homemade sugar-free syrups, if you could do water + extract + artificial sweetener + xanthan gum? From what I've read about xanthan gum, a little bit goes a long way.
The volume seems easiest to replace with just water, and if the sweet and the texture are dialed in, the water should just go along for the ride.

Part of what has me thinking along these lines is that I've been using those Mio flavor drops in water ... seems whether it's soda or gatorade or kool aid or whatever, 99% of the beverage is just water anyway.
Might not be that weird to see a recipe for a low carb tiki cocktail call for "xx parts water"?