A Guide to Orange Liqueurs: Triple Sec, Curacao, Cointreau?

welcome back to the educated barf live people today on the show we are going to venture and answer to the question what is the difference between cuantro triple sec and curacao this has got to be one of the most asked questions that i've gotten over the life of this channel for the purposes of this video i just want you to know that spirits are highly regional so what's available to me may not be available to you and then also the prices vary so when you all are trying to execute recipes and you don't have access to an ingredient the most natural question is how do i sub this out so today we're going to go through some of the products give them a taste give a little of their history and by the end of this video you'll know more about orange liqueur than you ever wanted to marius do you know what i wish i wish that there was a way that i could get my meat delivered to my house because sometimes the cuts of meat that i i want are sold out or unavailable and i just wish i could have a 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no-brainer you guys should try it so go to goodchop.com and enter the code educated barfly 100 or click the link in the description below this video to get 100 off your first three boxes today the difference between curacao and triple sec is actually quite simple triple sec is going to be a spirit that really preserves the natural essence of the peel whereas curacao adds the barrel notes from the brandy into the mix giving a deeper more complex flavor subbing these things out is pretty simple anything with a brandy base can sub for curacao and anything with a neutral brace can sub for cointreau and honestly not to split hairs here but really you could probably sub most of this stuff out for each other the thing is is that they all have a little bit of differences in them and so you're going to get a bit of a different cocktail that's not to say though that they won't work they probably will work and then getting that orange flavor which is what you're after when you put these in cocktails anyway you're going to get that no matter what you use now i think we should dive into these more specific bottles peel back the layers and see what's really going on so let's start with cointreau so cointreau is arguably the most iconic brand in the lineup and it is available to most of you who are watching this video it is truly a worldwide brand first released in france around 1875 cuantro is made by macerating orange peels and sugar beet alcohol it's made up of both sweet and bitter peels as well as dried and fresh peels it also bears mentioning that sugar beets accounts for a good portion of the world's white refined sugar it's not always sugar cane sometimes it's sugar beets and that's why you will see white sugar that says cane sugar because it is telling you that it came from cane as opposed to from sugar beets it is known as a type of triple sec which translates to triple dry in french and nobody can agree exactly what triple sec is in reference to different guide posits that it may be a reference to the triple distillation of the base spirit although quantro has claimed that they originated the term and it refers to the three types of oranges used in the recipe so cointreau is going to be light and crisp with an intensely orange flavor it's bottled at 40 abv and although it's pretty sweet it has a drying effect on the palette give this guy a little taste yep so what we have is just like an intense orange flavor and you get like that sweetness right up front you can really taste the sugar but then you have this back palette dryness and what's funny is that someone had asked me a while ago like how can it be sweet and dry at the same time and that's a really astute question because usually like when you're talking about wine something that is dry has less sugar than something that is like sweeter what we found out what marius and i found out after some very scientific approaches to this is that initially you get that orange and you get the sugar right up front but then the alcohol builds on your palate and the alcohol has a drying effect on the back of your palate and so it can both be pretty sweet and then also dry it's 40 abv so you have you know quite a bit of alcohol here and i think that solves the mystery of that you know again you have just a very intense orange flavor it's really nice because it's like a balance between those sweet orange peels and the bitter orange peels and so it's not overly overly sweet but the bitterness is very muted next up we have kombiel orange i hope i'm pronouncing that right this is cambier's original orange liqueur it was created in 1834 in samurai france so it predicts cointreau even though quantro claims to be the original triple sec is made with both sweet and bitter orange peels which are macerated into a neutral spirit and then distilled it has a very similar history to quantro in that the founders of the company were first confectioners that then got into the liqueur game it is also crystal clear it comes in at 40 abv or 80 proof it has a sharp alcoholic bite followed by an intense orange flavor which is sweet that then devolves to bitterness on the back end all right let's taste le orange again sugar right up front a little less dry from the ethanol in the back pallet very very obviously prominent orange flavor but this has actually more residual bitterness on the back end i actually kind of prefer it it's a little more complex and it has a deeper flavor than quantrum it's good so the combi air company had two products they had the combiere leon ranch and then they had this stuff called combiere elixir cambier elixir was a liqueur that was kind of it was sort of their answer to like amaro it basically had 15 different spices macerated into it which included saffron mirror cinnamon aloe it was based on this very famous elector from a very famous doctor named dr respale when they made the royal cambier what they decided to do was they would take the combiere orange and then they would mix in the spices from the elixir cambier and combine it into this you know kind of very spicy orange liqueur so what you have is an orange liqueur that has all of those spices on top of the oranginess of it i don't know if you can see but the color here is like very different it's kind of this golden hue to it whoa man okay it's funny we actually used to have this in kohl's but it's been so many years since i've tasted it i really couldn't remember what it tastes like so the orange in this is very muted and then you are playing up all those spices so you can taste the cardamom you can taste the cinnamon you can definitely taste the saffron in there which is what's probably giving it this color it is very flavorful but it is not a sub for any orange liqueur so if you are using royal cambier you are using it for its own properties so that brings us to triple sec triple sec is an off-brand orange liqueur and it is made in the same way as cointreau and many of the other dry orange liqueurs cuantro is the brand that actually claims the first use of the term triple sec in reference to their liqueur it is also made by macerating orange peels into a neutral spirit with sugar beets it will probably vary a bit from cointreau and combiere but it is a good sub for either of those and can be used interchangeably bowls and luxardo make the most recognizable bottles but many companies also make their own version of this liqueur curacao is made by macerating the peels of oranges into a brandy or cognac base it has a long long history that dates back all the way to 1527 when spanish explorers brought the seville orange to the island of curacao over time the orange evolved into what is now called the lahara orange this type of orange is very bitter to eat but the peels give off an incredible orange essence and it was because of these aromatic peels that led to the first curacao nobody knows who made the first curacao although we do have some clues the bowls company claims that their founder lucas bowles was the one who to originate a similar possibly the precursor of orange liqueur after he found that oils could be extracted from the peels and this does seem like a credible claim we know that the dutch west indies companies took possession of the island of curacao in 1634 and the bowls distillery which was founded in 1575 had a major stake in both the east and west india trading company to ensure that they got the spices they needed for liqueur production so they certainly were in the right place at the right time to originate the liquor that brings us to senor and company senior company has been making curacao on the island since 1896 and they claim that they are the only distillery which still uses the lahara orange native to the island their bottles are marked with the term genuine as a reference to this and we after a little bit of you know sleuthing and some emails we found a couple of bottles of this so thank you so much to bitters and bottles for getting us these bottles i would taste them for you now but i don't want to because they're not good they're just not good and um when i read in the back of them they don't even really seem that genuine because it says it's made out of sugar lt orange sweet whatever that is glycerin and then concentrate and then orange peels spices and herbs with no color added in this one and then this one which is like supposed to be like the curacao right isn't even a brandy base it's just the exact same thing as that but it has certified color added to it to make this hue it doesn't seem like a lot of people are are using this it's not like a contender for stuff that you should be using in cocktails we really just got it so that this orange liqueur video would be complete the bottle you'll most often see me use on the show is pierre ferran dry curacao you get all the benefits of the aged spirit but you've got that bit of dryness to temper the sweet notes and it's just really nicely balanced the curacao was developed in collaboration with david wundrich from a 19th century recipe and is also based on a traditional triple sec recipe with three distillations of spices that use the bitter orange peels of the curacao oranges and the question is does this mean that they use the lahara orange does this refute senor and company's claim and are they using the actual lahore orange i have not been able to find and answer that question if there's anybody from the pierre ferrand company that would like to weigh in on the comments or give us a call or an email i would greatly appreciate the information grand marnier is made by combining cognac with the distilled essence of seville oranges the cognac is made from the uuni blanc grape and is double distilled in copper pot stills although the company that became grand marnier had been making liqueur since 1827 their orange liqueur wasn't introduced until 1880 when louis andre monnier had the idea to combine cognac with the oils of oranges from the caribbean so we got together with his partner caesar ritz and developed the liqueur that would be named curacao marnier then caesar came up with the name grain marnier and the rest as they say is history now this definitely has some spice added you know it's nice and orangey of course but it is also very big with spices on the palette i taste a nice in here i'm not sure anise is used in the production of grand marnier but i taste it it's very deep in flavor and what's funny is that the presence of the alcohol and it's just like the depth of sort of spice and barrel notes really tempers the sweetness quite a bit there is a lot going on in there it's very complex flavor i would say that this is a sub for curacao like you could sub this out but it's such a different flavor than this guy that you're really going to have a much different flavor in your cocktail and so it's not going to be the same thing will it work most probably is it going to be different definitely now the last bottle that we wanted to go through here is this clement creole shrub so this is an orange liqueur that utilizes both aged and unaged rum agriculture creole spices that are macerated inside rum with the peels orange peels and then you know added sugar is added to it so again this is going to be a very proprietary flavor based on those spices so this one you can taste the rum agriculture really distinct flavor and then you get those bright oranges you get a little bitterness on the back end and then all of those spices and those spices are it's really hard to pick them out like what they could possibly be it's such a good flavor though i i really don't even want to venture to guess what the spices are but it has this really nice spice note on the back end of it i know a lot of bartenders have been using this liqueur to sub into mai tai to up the complexity of the cocktail which works out really nicely and it's very nice this actually isn't a bad sub for the grand marnier now i'm thinking about it they both kind of have that spice note although grand marnier is much sweeter and this has that rum note i think that you would get a good result in cocktails all right our exhaustive tasting of orange liqueurs is done and so what is the then the difference between all these orange lookers and how are they used the short answer is that they are all interchangeable in cocktails yes they will give off slightly different flavors but they all work in any cocktail which calls for orange liqueur but then again you will be changing the cocktail just keep that in mind the main difference is that triple sec style orange liqueurs are made with a base spirit that come from cane sugar and in some cases sugar beets or in most cases sugar beets really and curacao is made with a base spirit of cognac or brandy triple sec will usually be clear drier on the pallet and a very clean sharp orange flavor whereas because curacao has a brandy base there are going to be notes from the barrel aging of the spirit present it's going to be richer deeper and have more nuances in flavor profile along with that orange flavor the good news in all of this is that by choosing from the vast array of different orange liqueurs on the market you can put your own spin on many many classic and contemporary cocktails basically anything which calls for orange liqueur

Channel: The Educated Barfly

Views: 170,612

Keywords: easy drinks, drink recipe, easy cocktails, easy cocktail recipes, best cocktail recipes, simple cocktails, cocktails at home, homemade, how to drink, drinks, easy, quick, tasty, nice, binging with babish, cocktail chemistry, easy recipe, top 10, top 5, steve the bartender, masterclass, master class, cocktail, cocktails, educated barfly, cocktail recipes, anders erickson, anders bartender, orange liqueur, cointreau, combier, curacao, grand marnier

Id: iCtpmyFTcNY

Length: 14min 1sec (841 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 30 2022