Your Flavourist, the blog
We wish you a fabulous year 2022! 🥳
After a particularly busy 2021 in terms of consultancy missions 👨🔬, trainings 👨🏫, development of Flavour Manager 💻 and construction works 👷♂️, we look forward to seeing you again for exciting new projects all over Europe and a brand new lab in the heart of Paris!
📣 BREAKING NEWS – We are going to open our own laboratory, in the heart of Paris! 🎇
💹 This is a major step forward in the development of QR Flavour Solutions, which will allow us to develop our own flavourings, to set up training courses around taste and flavours, and to better support our food industry clients in the development of their products 👩🔬
📜 We have just signed the lease and collected the keys. The premises are ideally located, in the 17th arrondissement and near the Saint-Lazare train station. We are going to set up a flavour lab, a food lab and a training space, for an opening before the end of the year. Let’s get to work! 👷♂️
Keep following us, we’ll give more details soon 🤓
Flavour Manager is born! 🎉🎊
Aimed at food and flavour manufacturers, Flavour Manager is a unique full-web solution and a major digital innovation in the field of food flavourings 💻
👉 We tell you all about it at https://flavourmanager.com/en/home
With Flavour Manager, you don’t need to be a specialist or a lawyer to check the regulatory compliance of your flavourings and products containing flavourings! Designed by flavorists, this full-web solution compiles all EU regulations, performs the calculations for you and guides you towards full compliance ✔
In addition, you can manage your own flavour library in a modern and user-friendly web environment 🤩
If you are a flavourist, don’t miss our formulation console developed especially for flavourists! 👨🔬
The tool is available in English and French.
Subscribe to our LinkedIn page to stay informed: https://linkedin.com/showcase/flavourmanager
QR Flavour Solutions is two years old!
It is therefore in a very special context that we are blowing out our second candle. Our company has lived longer under the COVID era than outside it, with all the difficulties that this implies.
And yet, we have come a long way! 💪
🤝 We’ve been two partners for almost a year now, we’ve gone under the SAS status, and we’re both busy at 200% of our time
🤤 We work on exciting projects (non-alcoholic drinks, flavoured infusions, food supplements, aromatic profiles and language…) with very nice clients
💻 We provide distance learning courses for flavourists
🎓 We teach the flavourists of tomorrow
🤫 And shhh, it’s still a secret, we are about to offer you a complete digital solution for flavour management that we have been working on for more than a year (stay in touch, it’s coming soon!)
So we’re delighted because we’re doing pretty well in this time of crisis, although we’re really looking forward to turning this page. Also, we have chosen the plum as our birthday theme this year. The plum, in Chinese symbolism, represents resilience: it is still sometimes very cold when the plum trees blossom, heralding the spring. We wish you all the best resilience in these troubled times, and to harvest the fruits as soon as possible! ❤
Mocktails, or non-alcoholic cocktails, are an easy replacement for cocktails, as long as you can muster up some creativity. To start our 4th week of dry january, our flavourist Quentin dressed up as a mixologist, and it was really good, so we share 😋
Our winter mocktail has a reddish-orange coat and floats a slice of blood orange, the ultimate winter fruit. Its blood orange juice base gives it sweet floral notes, enhanced by a ginger juice that spices up this sweetness with spicy, earthy notes. An infusion of juniper berries completes the profile with notes of gin, reminiscent of the feel of familiar alcoholic cocktails. Finally, timut berries enhance the whole with tropical fruit notes and an electrifying tingling sensation ⚡
What’s interesting about this mocktail is that it manages to recreate some of the sensations of alcohol, which we associate with celebration or conviviality, but without consuming it: the drink is gourmand, warm, round and electrifying 🍊
Feel free to try it at home, and leave us a comment 😉
You can also share your mocktail recipes!
For some time now, we have discovered kefir, which is always a hit at aperitif time, especially when it is home-made!
In short, kefir is a drink made by fermenting sweetened fruit juice or milk and kefir grains, which are a leavening of lactic acid bacteria and yeast. Many people praise its health benefits as a probiotic, particularly as it contributes to good digestion, strengthens the immune system and provides vitamins, minerals and complete proteins.
But we are particularly interested in the taste of kefir! For the occasion, we made a ginger kefir (fruit kefir). On the nose, it presents milky notes, yeast and lemon zest. On the palate, you can smell lactic acid, sweet yoghurt notes, lemon (citric acid), a buttery side with notes of very ripe fruit, as well as buttery notes. The ginger in our case brings earthy notes without being pungent. On the finish, the yeast remains quite persistent.
Like the kombucha we talked about last week, this is a rather typical drink that can be divisive: you either like it or you don’t… In any case, you can’t remain indifferent!
And how does it work at home? There are two aspects to take into account: the recipe of the drink, and the maintenance of the kefir grains to maintain a constant supply in your fridge!
Special thanks to Nico, our kefir chef 🙂
For 1L of drink (over 72h)
Ingredients: 25g kefir grains, 25g sugar, 1 organic dried fig, 1 organic lemon slice, seasoning of your choice.
Day D: mix all the ingredients except the seasoning in a closed but not airtight jar (this is important so that it does not explode during fermentation), which remains at room temperature for 48 hours.
Day 2: filter, collect your kefir grains (weigh them, you’ll see that your 25g has become 30g!), throw away the fig and the lemon slice, add the seasoning (for example: 1 lemon cut into slices, 1 piece of ginger cut into slices, a sprig of mint, … be creative!), and pour the whole into a sealed bottle that will stay in the fridge for 24 hours.
Day D+3: degas slowly (be careful, the quantity of gas can be surprising…) and enjoy!
Your kefir grains can be used over and over again! Keep them in a solution of water and sugar (for 100g of kefir, a 250ml jar of water and 3 teaspoons of sugar). Every two to three weeks, soak the index finger, if it is no longer sweet add more sugar!
Gradually your quantity of kefir will increase, if you make drinks often. Don’t hesitate to give the surplus to your friends 😉
It’s 7pm, the day has been long and tiring, and it’s time for a drink. But what should we drink?
For this 2nd episode of our Dry-January, we tested 3 non-alcoholic drinks, chosen by feel, to replace the traditional 7pm beer…
GALVANINA – THE BIO LEMON. Galvanina is an Italian mineral water that has been sold for more than a century, and has diversified its range and offers many fresh organic drinks. We stopped by their organic lemon tea. No doubt about it on the nose, which reveals itself to be powerfully lemon and lemon juice. On the palate, a nice citrusy attack, once again lemon and very typical of juice. The background notes are herbal and lavender floral. The drink is very sweet (a bit too much for our taste), a lower sugar level could have revealed a tangy side which we miss a bit for a lemon drink. As for the packaging, it looks like a lemonade, so you might be confused to find a flat drink… But despite everything, we liked it, and we recommend it to those who like gourmet drinks and lemon!
GALLIMATE – MATE. Gallimaté is a French start-up that has been offering mate-based energy drinks for a few years. And of course we wanted to test their “mate” drink. On the nose, we are already bewitched by notes of cooked fruits (cooked apple, cooked plum) and light herbal notes. In the attack, the green and herbaceous citrus notes delight us (dried grass, thyme, rosemary). The cooked fruits come back in the background, as well as very pleasant black tea notes with a slight astringency. The drink has a slight acidity. It foams slightly and fizzes in the form of fine bubbles. We LOVE it and it works completely in the spirit of the aperitif.
TO BE KOMBUCHA – INTIMATE. To Be Kombucha offers drinks brewed in the heart of Paris (kombucha is a drink made by growing bacteria and yeast in a sweet medium). We tested Intimate, with verbena and ginger. The nose may not seem very appealing: vinegary, acetic, fermented, rising. However, on the palate we discover herbal notes, lemongrass, an earthy side brought by the ginger, and a very pleasant astringency and acidity. In the background, there are notes of wild berries and blackcurrant. In the end, although very discreet in the face of the fermented, the verbena and ginger blend particularly well. The drink remains very marked and divisive, like all kombucha: you either love it or you hate it! In our case, it’s 50/50… Special mention to the reusable bottle: we fully endorse it!
In conclusion, it is not impossible in France to enjoy an aperitif without consuming alcohol and without stopping at a Coke. Let’s bet that in a future that we hope is very close, more and more tasty alternatives will be proposed to us!
And you, what do you drink during an alcohol-free aperitif?
At QR Flavour Solutions, we are taking up the Dry January Challenge!
Wine, beer and cocktails are an integral part of the French art of living. For many of us, they are difficult to dissociate, culturally, from conviviality and sociability. However, alcohol remains an addictive psychoactive product that is harmful to health if abused. The January Challenge questions our relationship with alcohol and our lifestyle habits in a playful way. It also allows us to discover alternatives to alcohol and to reinvent, at least temporarily, our drinking habits.
So this year, for the third time, we decided to go for it! We put down the glass of champagne at 00:01 last Friday, and we’re sticking to the rule, whatever the cost. Our goal: not a drop of alcohol until Sunday 31 January at 11.59pm!
So far, so good. We promise to keep you posted 😉
We wish you to reach your heights in 2021!
Today, we are very proud and happy to start an 8-day training course, in video, with a large pan-African flavour house. We will cover a lot of topics: formulation and adaptation of flavours, colourings, emulsions, application in beverages, confectionery, biscuits, … 😋
Initially, we were supposed to go on site, but due to the strong sanitary constraints, we are adapting with a 100% dematerialised programme. And for that we have plenty of materials and ideas, don’t hesitate to ask us 😆