Tiff Christie - 00:40
While you might be hard-pressed to believe, the cocktail syrups are the elixir vitae, or elixir of immortality, spoken about in ancient alchemy. For lovers of tropical drinks, Falernum is not far off.
So it's unsurprising that US premium cocktail syrup brand Liquid Alchemist has just launched their own Falernum, the most recent addition to its stable of flavours.
To find out more, we talked to a modern version of an alchemist, former bartender and Liquid Alchemist founder, Randy Tarlow, about flavour tropical cocktails and the importance of syrups to the balance of a good drink.
Thank you for joining us, Randy.

Randy Tarlow - 01:28
Hello Tiff, Thanks for having me.

Tiff Christie - 01:31
Now you founded Liquid Alchemist back in 2009. How did that come about?

Randy Tarlow - 01:38
So I was a professional bartender, spent most of my life in restaurants doing a number of roles. Spent most of my life in restaurants doing a number of roles, and Liquid Alchemist was a side project because I was doing event catering and bar programs and cocktail syrups that were of a natural, premium nature at that time. So it came about as a necessity. I was just making cocktail syrups from natural, fresh ingredients. At that time, all the cocktail syrups that were available commercially had artificial flavours and colours and preservatives and were essentially cheap products that you could buy at grocery stores or liquor stores. So, the customers and the clientele that I was working with wanted premium type of products to serve to their guests. So I needed natural ingredients and so, because I couldn't buy it, I had to make it myself, and that's how Liquid Optimist started.

Tiff Christie - 02:48
Liquid Optimus started. There must be a fair amount of difference between making a syrup for a bar use and a syrup that has to go on a shelf and have shelf stability. I mean, that must have been a bit of a learning curve.

Randy Tarlow - 03:01
It certainly was. It's a great question because when I started I was making everything you know in small, bad micro batches, a few bottles at a time, you know, grabbing ingredients from whether it was a farmer's market or a grocery store, just customising and making to order. So, doing that, you have a lot of control over it. You can really make things exactly the way you want it. You can make things you know for pars. If it's a bar, you know, hey, I only need to make a few ounces of this syrup, so it's great. But when you start scaling the product to make it shelf stable and to make it last, that really is a challenge and there was certainly a learning curve with it and it took a lot of trial and tribulation to perfect that. But we have and that's where we're at today.

Tiff Christie - 03:52
Now I believe the brand is incredibly popular amongst your fellow bartenders. How important have they been in spreading the message of the brand?

Randy Tarlow - 04:04
Yeah, we're a beloved brand amongst the bar community and cocktail enthusiasts alike. I really owe a lot of the success of Liquid Alchemist to our loyal bartender and cocktail enthusiast following. We wouldn't be here without their loyal support, whether it's in bar programs or purchasing our products online retail stores or through a distributor.

Tiff Christie - 04:30
We really do owe a lot of our success to that supported community I suppose also people who are interested in cocktails look at what bartenders use in a bar situation and then go out and buy that sort of product themselves. So I assume that a lot of kind of word of mouth to cocktail enthusiasts came from watching bartenders use the product.

Randy Tarlow - 04:58
Definitely, definitely. Yeah, you know, customers go to bars to experience their favourite cocktails, but also you'll learn about new things, and when they see bartenders tinker or make cocktails with certain spirits or ingredients that they're not familiar with, you know, we get a lot of very excitement as a result. So those customers are going to go try to understand what that bartender is using and where they can find it, and so the purchases of Liquid Alchemist online or in retail space are certainly a result of that.

Tiff Christie - 05:36
Now I must say one of the things I rather like about the brand is that you present your bottles in different sizes, so home bartenders can get smaller bottles and not worry so much about the syrup going off or having to use it up that you would get from one of the tall 750ml bottles.

Randy Tarlow - 06:00
That's exactly right. So we started off with 750ml bottles typical size in bars and restaurants it's 25 ounces and we realised that that was let's create a bottle that's a little more consumer-friendly, but that could also be used in bars and restaurants, and that three, seven, five ML bottle uh, or 12, around 12 ounces came to be really popular, definitely for consumers, but also in the bars and restaurants, because's a very small, very friendly bottle. It doesn't take up a lot of space, you can have a few flavours of our products and it's not taking up a huge footprint in your well or in your storage. So the 375 ml was really something that came about after that exact thought that you mentioned. It's certainly a consumer-friendly bottle.

Tiff Christie - 07:11
Now you have more than 15 syrups in the range. Can you take us through a few of them and indicate which are the more popular ones?

Randy Tarlow - 07:21
Yeah, so the Liquid Alchemist line expanded. Wow, we started with. Well, I started tinkering with just a couple flavours in my kitchen and now, yeah, you're right, we've got 15. And Falernum being the most recent, which we're really excited about. After there's consumer demand for a specific flavour, you know I listen and you know challenge my team with producing them. They have to meet our specifications as far as you know the quality standards that we as a brand expect. It takes time, but over the years we now have 15 flavours and you'll see those flavours, you know, and really they're staple flavours inside of bar programs and inside of typical cocktails that are popular, that you see in cocktail books, that you find on the internet combinations. We like to keep our flavours straightforward but high quality, and so we consider liquid alchemist more of a utilitarian syrup product rather than an eccentric syrup product?

Tiff Christie - 08:35
Yes, how important are syrups to the canon of cocktail ingredients?

Randy Tarlow - 08:41
Well, you know, by definition of a cocktail, sweetener is essential ingredient in a cocktail ingredient. Well, you know, by definition of a cocktail, sweetener is a central ingredient in a cocktail. Now it's open to interpretation on what a sweetener needs to be to balance a cocktail and how much of that sweetener.
But in the modern cocktail you're seeing syrups being used because it enhances the flavour with sweetener the sugar or the agave or whatever sweetener you want to put in there and then it adds in the fresh juicy flavour component and it really allows you to keep consistency in your cocktails. And so syrups over the years have become essential ingredients in cocktail recipes. Essential ingredients in cocktail recipes. A lot of bars will make them in-house so they can have control over them or they can make those fun flavour combinations, as I mentioned before. But also customers just want a straightforward flavour that they know is going to taste good, that they can find on their retail shelves.
So the fact is that syrups are essential in modern cocktailing and if you don't have syrups it limits your capability to make cocktails. It's really putting you into more of a classic cocktail style situation, which is wonderful. I love classic cocktails. But if you want to make exotic cocktails or tropical cocktails, tiki per se, if you want to expand into sours and different margarita-style cocktails of course the margarita is the most popular you need juice and you need sweetener to balance that cocktail.

Tiff Christie - 10:19
Now let's get on to the bologna. Onto the bologna, I assume there must have been a call for that for quite a while, because it is an essential for tiki or tropical cocktails we're getting a call actually for quite a few years and, as I mentioned before, the flavour in our portfolio are a result of consumer demand.

Randy Tarlow - 10:42
Like you mentioned, we are a very popular brand inside the tiki community and so certain tropical drinks call for staple syrup flavours, you know, orgeat, passion fruit, coconut all of which Liquid Alchemist has currently Flarendum was always a request that we received and we said you know what, there's just not enough demand out there. It's a great flavour, we love it, it's essential, but its usage is really limited in tiki cocktails and that's kind of where it lives predominantly. So we said, you know what, let's just put this one on hold. But the demand kept coming, which is great, so we decided to produce it. We took a shot and it took a lot of time to get it right, but we're really proud of our falernum and we recently launched it and it's been going well. It's well received and we're really excited about this flavour.

Tiff Christie - 11:39
Now tell us exactly what falernum is.

Randy Tarlow - 11:44
So falernum is a syrup that is made from lime and ginger and almond and has some baking spices in there, like a clove and allspice. So it's a flavour that is found in tiki cocktails, as we mentioned, and it's really something that came about debatably where we think Barbados, but in the Caribbean for the most part. So that type of spice and that type of flavour complexity goes great with rum and those island spices work with rum and other tropical flavours, very juicy flavours. So that type of syrup, that falernum syrup, became very popular in tiki cocktails and there are some wonderful tiki recipes that call for that falernum. It's not as widely used as something like an orgeat or a passion fruit or a coconut in tiki cocktails but it is a flavour that is essential to make certain tiki cocktails.

Tiff Christie - 12:57
And which cocktails would that be?

Randy Tarlow - 13:01
Yeah, so most popular is going to be the Saturn. That's the one that rings true with most folks, as well as the Zombie.
Also a very popular cocktail, very exciting. But Falernum is a flavour that you can work into a lot of tiki cocktails. You can put a small dose of Falernum in there, you can put up a quarter ounce even, and it's really strong in flavour. The spices I mentioned, the clove and the allspice they're indicative of holiday for some people. So those rich seasonal flavours really come through in juicy cocktails, tropical cocktails specifically. We don't necessarily you know to be politically correct we think of tiki as a culture, as a kind of a pop culture, but specifically the style of drink, we consider them tropical cocktails.

Tiff Christie - 13:59
I imagine, with that baking spice and all the other ingredients that you mentioned, making it at home would be a bit of a nightmare, so it's useful to be able to commercially buy it.

Randy Tarlow - 14:13
Just like anything. You know, we would make our culinary recipes at home. There are some things that are easy. Boiling pasta is relatively easy, but, man, sometimes it gets too soft or it gets al dente. It's way too hard. All we got to do is just follow the recipe for the timer and boil some water, but yet it can be even challenging to boil pasta.
It is kind of the same with any culinary type of process. It's just following directions, it's balanced, it's taste. So when you have a syrup like Falernum, yeah, it's complex. There are quite a few ingredients that need to come together in harmony to make a balanced syrup. You know, too much spice, too much clove and allspice, it's not good. It's like potpourri, you know, but not enough, and it just tastes like, you know, lime syrup. So really, the balance is very important when making it home. So some people are like you know what I could do it? Maybe I don't feel like it, so I'm just going to go ahead and purchase it from Amazon Prime and it will be there in two days. You know, it's all good either way.

Tiff Christie - 15:21
Talk us through the process of producing a syrup like this. So when you first thought about, okay, we are actually going to do this, what were the processes that you followed between that and literally bringing it out?

Randy Tarlow - 15:37
Referring to liquid alchemist in general or process, or to the Falernum syrup, our number 15?.

Tiff Christie - 15:45
Well both. What did you go through to bring it out?

Randy Tarlow - 15:49
yeah, so just focusing on philarnum. So again, it first starts with listening. You know, we we as a team are very thoughtful in our process and we like to consider first what our team thinks and what they hear from the market. We like to listen to our customers and what they want, and then, of course, we have a national distributor, a number of national distributors, but the largest that we use is Southern Glazers, and then, of course, we'll use big sites like Amazon, right? So this little formula that I mentioned is kind of how we consider bringing on new products.
We want to make sure that we're selling things, we want to make sure that our products stay as fresh as possible, so we have to make sure that we plan for that accordingly. We have to make sure that our ingredients are accessible, but, most important, we have to make sure it tastes good, and that's probably the most challenging process and that takes time. We do our best to make sure there's consistency, to make sure that our products taste exactly like they're listed on the label, and with that it takes a lot of effort and a lot of focus. So to bring a product to market it takes time. It could take years to get it right.
So Falernum, specifically, I was very particular about that product because you know it had been stewing for so long as far as requests. So like, well, if we're going to do it and we've got this big loyal following in the Tiki community, like we're going to make this for everybody. But specifically, you know this is kind of an homage to the support that we got for all these years from the tiki community. So you know I want to make sure we do right by them. So put a lot of effort into this, into this flavour, and I think we nailed it.

Tiff Christie - 17:42
How many iterations did you go through to come up with the one that you actually released?

Randy Tarlow - 17:50
Oh, I'll get specific Quite a few. You kind of go back and forth. I try to get the profile that I'm looking for, that I want, and then I present it to our team. We try to get opinion from in-house. We then take that flavour as a bench sample, if you will, and we make cocktails out of it A lot of cocktails, and we try it in all different things. We use it in culinary uses, we make it, you know, non-alcoholic drinks, sodas, sodastream, etc. We really put that syrup to the test to make sure that it has a lot of uses and it also holds up to the expectations. I personally can think of five really good versions that we came up with that I think all were delicious in their own way, but the last one just kind of the golden star from that and it was just the aha moment. This is the one.

Tiff Christie - 18:45
Let's go with it being around since the 18th century. I imagine there would be countless recipes with different measurements and different ingredients. How do you work out which one go with?

Randy Tarlow - 19:00
yeah. So you know, case is subjective first and foremost, and for brands, their offerings are going to be as original as possible. It's a flavour that's been around, yeah, certainly since the 1800s, if not earlier. So you see a few products on the market that are liqueurs, but falernum syrup has been around a very long time and certainly there are interpretations of that syrup and, as I mentioned before, taste is subjective. So that means that some producers or some bartenders or some people making it might want a little bit more of one ingredient than another, really have to determine what it is that I or we or you like and what we want to see in our cocktails and what we're trying to communicate through that cocktail, and therefore that determines the taste profile or the flavour profile of that syrup.
So for us, you know, we wanted, we wanted a syrup that was going to be pronounced in its spices, so that's, it's going to hold up in a in a rich, juicy, spiritous, yet sweet tropical-style cocktail. So we made sure that the spices were pronounced. And then we wanted to make sure that you can taste the lime juice and you can taste the ginger and you can taste a small component of almond, a small component of almond. So we try to create the harmony really between all of those to make sure that somebody that's tasting it can pick out exactly what's on the label. I generally, as I mentioned before, bring forward utilitarian style flavours it's strawberry, it's blood orange, it's ginger, so it's very understandable. But when we have this flavour combination which is falernum, certain flavours might get lost easily or be hidden by another flavour. So we try to make the balance in our syrup, just as we would making a balance in cocktails.

Tiff Christie - 21:07
Anyone who makes tropical drinks with any regularity would probably be familiar with John D Taylor's velvet falernum. How is your falernum different?

Randy Tarlow - 21:18
So the JD Taylor has been around for a long time.
It's been an industry staple and it's a liqueur. It is fortified with alcohol in it. It has a low ABV of alcohol. A liquid alchemist is a syrup.
We are a non-alcoholic product, and you know I will not speak specifically about the production of JD Taylor's, but you might find the liquid alchemist version to be more of a natural-tasting product that might have richer ingredients in it, as opposed to a more value-priced liqueur in the JD tailors no-transcript. Well, first, I think it's to determine if that person wants to consume alcohol. That's the first step, because with our product, you could have a choice to make an alcoholic cocktail or a zero-proof or a non-alcoholic. Distilled spirits exist so that people can take them home and they can reproduce their favourite cocktail in a non-alcoholic version and still have fun with mixology. So with Liquid Alchemist, I would propose that it's a little more of a diverse offering rather than a liqueur, which asserts that the customer has to create an alcoholic cocktail.
But to answer your question specifically, tiff, I think you did answer about a flavour profile. You know I mentioned before that Liquid Alchemist generally seems to be very rich in its quality ingredients. Those ingredients really cut through and they're pronounced where I find that many liqueurs, including JD Taylor's tend to be a little bit more describe it subtle in their flavouring. We don't like to use the word value-priced or cheap ingredients. I don't think that's fair. I just think for what the product is, the falernum liqueur might miss some of the spices or be very subtle, whereas liquid alchemist is going to be something like we make in-house or at the bar where you get a lot of that flavouring and a lot of those spices coming forward in the flavour profile.

Tiff Christie - 23:56
So it's a lot more robust, shall we say.

Randy Tarlow - 23:59
I think robust is a great description.

Tiff Christie - 24:01
yes, Okay, as an ex-bar tender, did you actually create Tropical Drink for the launch?

Randy Tarlow - 24:38
Actually, we decided to go with two drinks, and one of which our national ambassador, Kyle Rio, which is a really great vehicle to showcase the falernum syrup in and what's in the Saturn, for those who aren't aware, so that is a gin-based tiki cocktail that includes falernum as well as passion fruit and orgeat and lemon.
Why do you think tropical drinks have remained so popular? Well, first, I think the tiki revolution is upon us. It was maybe about 10 years ago. Tiki made a comeback and now it's rolling. It's huge. But there was a time before that where I wouldn't say tiki is dead, but it was less popular.
In the US we saw a lot of Tiki bars that were just becoming relics. There wasn't a lot of effort put into them. They just remained from mid-century up to now. They just existed. But the renaissance of tiki started, like I mentioned, about 10 years ago when we saw really, really good bar. Groups put a lot of effort not just in design but development of the cocktail program and the bartenders that were making those drinks. And then fast forward 10 years now we're in a tiki boom.
So you see a lot of tiki bars that are making tropical drinks. You see a lot of top-notch professional bartenders competing at a world-class level making tropical drinks. So those drinks right now are then echoed into the consumer world. So cocktail enthusiasts then want to recreate those drinks in their kitchen and in their backyard lanais. So now we have a demand for the syrups that go into those, and then the spirits, like the rum. So business is good for rum right now, whereas some years ago rum was on decline. And likewise in the syrups and in our business with Liquid Alchemist and likewise in, you know, the syrups and in our business with liquid alchemists, our shot is our top seller. We are thankful to the tiki community for for being supportive of that flavour. But also it's really because of the tiki community and the culture that's upon us that we're seeing that flavour be so successful, as well as our passion fruit, our coconut, and then now the Falernum.

Tiff Christie - 26:56
So the reaction to the Falernum has been really good across both bartenders and consumers.

Randy Tarlow - 27:04
Then it has. Yeah, we've had great responses from professional bartenders, from bar owners, from our distributor experts, from world-class mixologists getting their hands on our falernum, so the response from the professional community has been great Consumers that have been tasting our product. So far, so good. We're very thankful for those who have purchased it, and we also know that it's a newer product. We just launched this a few weeks ago, so we're still really giving it an initial push out of the starting line. So I would expect by next summer, with Polaroid being about a year old, that we're going to really build upon the success from the start here and see what we do for next summer. But for right now, the launch has been great great Now.

Tiff Christie - 27:59
You mentioned earlier that you have nationwide distribution and you're also available on Amazon.

Randy Tarlow - 28:02
We're available in all 50 states in the US and beyond, in North America, soon to be in the UK and Europe and you can purchase us right on Amazon. You go Amazon Prime, get it in 48 hours. You can go to our website, liquid-alchemistcom. You can go if you're in, for example, in the market. You can go to Total Wine. You can purchase our products, certain grocery stores around the country and then, if you're a bar or restaurant, you can purchase our products through wholesalers.
The largest that we use is Southern Glazers, wine and Spirits. They have our products in most of their states and then we have some other great distributors that we work with in other states where you can access our products too. You can also buy our products wholesale on faircom. You can also buy our products wholesale on faircom. We're very thankful for our distributor partners because that's allowed us to get to bars and restaurants and it's allowed bartenders to be able to experiment with our products and to be able to use them in bar programs. So thankful to our distributor for letting us grow inside their network. And that's really what we attribute a lot of success with is that combination of professional bartenders using our products, purchasing them through the wholesaler and then, as we mentioned before that, going into the consumer world, and then the loyal support of our cocktail enthusiasts that are purchasing our products online or from a retail store.

Tiff Christie - 29:41
Now, if people want more information, they can, of course, as you mentioned, go to the website, which is liquidalchemistcom, or connect with the brand via your socials.

Randy Tarlow - 29:54
Yes, so you can go to our website. Our website was created to be a resource where you can go to liquid-alchemistcom. Unfortunately, it's got a hyphen between the two. That's what it is, but with SEOs you can probably just type in Liquid Alchemist and it'll go right to it. But we created that website to be a resource and what that means is that you can go and you can learn about cocktails in addition to the story of Liquid Alchemist.
But you can click on a flavour, and it will tell you exactly how to mix. It will give you examples of some of the recipe guides that we create for holidays and beyond. We have a really cool zero-proof, non-alcoholic cocktail guide in there that you can download. We also encourage people to go check out our Instagram, which is liquidalchemist.com, and there what we do is we try to spotlight what our professional bartenders and even our home cocktail enthusiasts are doing with our products. You can learn and see some of the cool things that people are shaking up, whether they're videos or reels or photos. But Liquid Alchemist really is again designed to be a resource to help educate and to point people in the right direction of how to make cocktails and also how to use Liquid Alchemist.

Tiff Christie - 31:16
All right, Randy. Well look. Thank you so much for your time and good luck with the further rollout of the Falernum

Randy Tarlow - 31:25
Thank you, Tiff. I appreciate the time. Thank you for having me on your podcast. I really appreciate it