Flavour Development for Beverages

The course is pretty much complete. I'm just going through it and adding additional information in the text sections, and there might be one video that needs a reshoot just because it needs to be clearer. It will be released in the first week of March. I'm taking a quick five-day break, starting Friday, and I didn't want to release the course just as I'm leaving. There are always a few hiccups, so I'd prefer to be available to answer questions and troubleshoot things.

The Goal of the Course

Beverage science is a big topic; you could probably get a Ph.D. in it, and even then, there would still be a lot of information you'd need to learn.  Beyond the science, the artistic side deals with flavour development, which is this course's key goal: to understand how to work with flavour compounds to prototype a beverage. 

If you've ever looked at getting a consultant to develop a beverage for you, you'll know they can be quite expensive and other than doing a few tasting samples, you really don't have creative control unless you have a big budget and work directly with them in the lab. This course will solve that and put the flavour creation aspects into your hands.

Who This Course Is For

If you want to create a flavour for a beverage like professional flavourists and flavour houses do, then this course is for you. This course aims to help you work with flavour compounds at natural levels using an easy technique where I've removed most of the calculations for you. I understand a lot of people don't like math, so I kept this in mind when developing the course. 

The course will give you a solid background in why some flavour compounds work well and some don't. Then it demonstrates how to dose those flavours at proper levels, and then from there, your imagination and sense of taste and smell are the only limitations. 

If you are commercializing a beverage but all the industry jargon confuses you and causes communication problems with the companies you work with, this course will help. 

If you are a bartender or restaurant owner who wants to be on the cutting edge of flavour development for cocktails and non-alcoholic drinks, this course is for you. Mixing other companies' products together to create drinks is fine, but if you want to impress the world, harnessing flavour science will allow you to tweak every detail of drink making. And who knows, I suspect many techniques and compounds used in this course will make their way into the cocktail competitions shortly. Do you want to be left out? 

If you are a writer who wants to do deep dives into beverages and is tired of just rewording press releases to make copy for your editor. Understanding the development process will allow you to ask smart questions and dispel beverage myths and misunderstandings, all great attributes of a good writer.

This Course Is Not For You If...

...you are just looking for recipes. Though you can use the skills learned from this course to develop these types of flavours, the course is designed to help make brand-new creations or modifications of existing ones. If you only like following recipes, then this isn't for you as I don't detail any recipes in this course. Those will be on Flavour Zone in the near future. However, if you like breaking the rules and creating delicious beverages, you will benefit from it.

The course does require some equipment and ingredients to benefit fully because we are working with professional flavours. You can take the course to learn, but you will benefit greatly if you practice what is taught. To get started, you'll need about $200 to $300 in lab equipment and maybe $100 in flavour compounds. All of the equipment and sources of compounds are in the course material. You may already have some of the equipment and ingredients, but it might not be the time to take the course if you can't afford an additional $300 to $500. However, if you buy the course, you will have access to it forever and can review the material anytime you need. 

Pricing

Initial pricing and discounts will be based on your membership level and how much you've paid as a member. Those who have been members longer or on higher membership levels will get deeper discounts. Some on the Benefactor level will get the course for free because I appreciate the support, and their financial support has allowed me to put this course together.

Now, if you are on the $5 support level, there are still minor discounts and the standard "introductory offer" that everyone has to do these days.  

I will also work the discounts into the different tier levels. For example, if you upgraded to the Curiosity membership level ($15/month) and signed up for a year, you save $30. You would also get $150 to $200 off the price of the course, depending on how long you were a Support member. There will be a price grid, with discounts once the course is available.

Here's the blunt way to put it: I want the pricing to be accessible to the maximum number of people, but I want to reward paid membership tiers who supported me over the past year. I can't under-sell myself, I know this course has a lot of value so I'm trying to strike a balance.

Once the course is available in a week or two, you will receive a discount code that considers your input into this Patreon. 

Omni Channel

As this Patreon grows, it is becoming difficult to manage all the questions because they show up in so many places, and in some of those places, if you respond to my response, I don't get notified.  And it takes too much time to go backwards through posts to figure out what I missed. I suspect this problem may get bigger with the course being released shortly.

The solution is the  "Omni Channel" support system by Freshworks. This online support system creates a unified inbox with a history of conversations. It takes email, WhatsApp, text messages, Instagram and web chat and brings them all together in one place. I've been testing this for student/instructor interactions and it should work as well as answering questions for the Curiosity, Maker and Benefactor membership levels. I'll send an email with the different methods to contact me, and yes, SMS will be one. Though I may be slow to respond because it won't go directly to my phone.

And as usual, if you have questions, let me know below, and if I didn't respond to a previous question, send the question again to get my attention.