FLAVORING OF RAKI WITH ANISE

Treatment and handling of your distillate.

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ultradistiller
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FLAVORING OF RAKI WITH ANISE

Post by ultradistiller »

Hello Dear All,

I can get 95 %vol (measured at 20 C) product from my equipment and would like to make raki (ouzo in Greek).

I wonder if there is someone specialized at this topic.

Here are my questions about using anise while making raki, I try to keep them as simple as possible:

1) At what concentration should our ethanol be (by %vol) for flavoring with anise?

2) What should be the amount of anise to be used for per liter of ethanol (for the %vol indicated in question 1)?

3) How long should it take for the flavoring process?

4) Is it required/recommended to have active carbon processing prior to flavoring? (if yes question 5)

5) Do I have to dilute my product to certain level before applying active carbon filtering?

6) Any points that I should pay attention when distilling the flavored liquid?

Thanks in advance,

Cheers...
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Odin
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Re: FLAVORING OF RAKI WITH ANISE

Post by Odin »

Hi Ultra,

I use an easy method to make Ouzo or Raki. You might not want to use it, but I might at least help you in answering some questions.
1: Given my experience with making gins, I would suggest to "cool" your 95% liquor down to 40%. That will do it, if you want to extract anissette taste;
2: I will look into it and answer you later. My gut feeling says something like 10 to 20 grams per litre;
3: I will get back to that as well;
4: Yes! I don't know how clear and neutral your 95% tastes, but in general: the purer the base drink, the better the anisette taste comes out;
5: Carbon filtering works best after you dilute your drink to around 40%;
6: Yes! How do you want to distill it? With herbs in the container or after sifting the herbs out? And: I expect you removed heads/tails in your reflux run, so you don't have to get rid of that when pot distilling your herbal drink.

I've got some great German books on distilling and look up some good Ouzo recipe. I think more than just anisette is used.

Regards, Odin.
"Great art is created only through diligent and painstaking effort to perfect and polish oneself." by Buddhist filosofer Daisaku Ikeda.
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Re: FLAVORING OF RAKI WITH ANISE

Post by Odin »

I just found a recipe in Jan van Schaik's "Great distillation & liquere making book", 1995. Per litre of of ouzo. Make 0.5 litre of 80% strong (160 proof) alcohol. Further needed ingredients: 10 grams of anise, 5 grams of star anise, 1 vanilla bean, one cinnamon stick, two cloves, 2 gramms of fennel seeds. Crush all ingredients, put them in the alcohol, let them macerate for a week in a closed bottle of some kind. Warm place is best, and shake it everyday. After a week, put in another half a litre of water. Distill everything and collect half a litre of distilate per litre of this recipe. Add water to bring the alc percentage to around 40% or a bit more. Add sugar to sweeten it up. You can also make a syrop from water and sugar. Use 0.5 litre of water, put in 200 grams of sugar, bring to boil, boil for 5 minutes, let it cool. Put as much in your distilate, in order to get your alc percentage back to around 40% (calculate beforehand, because your alcohol meter cannot read in a sugar rich liquid).

Regards, Odin.

Additional: if you want to use activated carbon to filter, you will probably bring the strength back to around 40%. I think you could also macerate the ingredients mentioned above in 40% alcohol. A bit longer then one week might compensate for the lesser alcohol percentage.

Could you let me know if this works out for you? This is one recipe I did not do myself yet.
"Great art is created only through diligent and painstaking effort to perfect and polish oneself." by Buddhist filosofer Daisaku Ikeda.
ultradistiller
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Re: FLAVORING OF RAKI WITH ANISE

Post by ultradistiller »

Odin wrote:I just found a recipe in Jan van Schaik's "Great distillation & liquere making book", 1995. Per litre of of ouzo. Make 0.5 litre of 80% strong (160 proof) alcohol. Further needed ingredients: 10 grams of anise, 5 grams of star anise, 1 vanilla bean, one cinnamon stick, two cloves, 2 gramms of fennel seeds. Crush all ingredients, put them in the alcohol, let them macerate for a week in a closed bottle of some kind. Warm place is best, and shake it everyday. After a week, put in another half a litre of water. Distill everything and collect half a litre of distilate per litre of this recipe. Add water to bring the alc percentage to around 40% or a bit more. Add sugar to sweeten it up. You can also make a syrop from water and sugar. Use 0.5 litre of water, put in 200 grams of sugar, bring to boil, boil for 5 minutes, let it cool. Put as much in your distilate, in order to get your alc percentage back to around 40% (calculate beforehand, because your alcohol meter cannot read in a sugar rich liquid).

Regards, Odin.

Additional: if you want to use activated carbon to filter, you will probably bring the strength back to around 40%. I think you could also macerate the ingredients mentioned above in 40% alcohol. A bit longer then one week might compensate for the lesser alcohol percentage.

Could you let me know if this works out for you? This is one recipe I did not do myself yet.


Hi Odin,

Thanks for your kind guiding,

In the first run, I always separate the heads and tails and so I use only the middle run for the production of the final drink. I keep the herbs in the still during the final distillation stage. And I will try your recipe and let you know about the results.

Cheers,

Ultradistiller
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Re: FLAVORING OF RAKI WITH ANISE

Post by Odin »

Ultra,

Do you use a potstill for the final run? I think if you use the reflux and boil the ingredients in your boiler, the refluxing and purification will take out most of the anisette taste. A pot still is better for your prefered "hot compounding" method, IMHO. When you only have a reflux, you might want to go with puting the herbs in the top and gas distilling them.

Good luck again, Odin. 8)
"Great art is created only through diligent and painstaking effort to perfect and polish oneself." by Buddhist filosofer Daisaku Ikeda.
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Re: FLAVORING OF RAKI WITH ANISE

Post by ultradistiller »

Odin wrote:Ultra,

Do you use a potstill for the final run? I think if you use the reflux and boil the ingredients in your boiler, the refluxing and purification will take out most of the anisette taste. A pot still is better for your prefered "hot compounding" method, IMHO. When you only have a reflux, you might want to go with puting the herbs in the top and gas distilling them.

Good luck again, Odin. 8)
Hi Odin,

For the final run, I put my equipment into pot still mode, so there ain't any reflux or purification issue,

thanks a lot,

Cheers...
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Re: FLAVORING OF RAKI WITH ANISE

Post by Mario84 »

Wont the fennel (or anis?) in the distillate louch to white when you water it down to 40% after the last run. I would imagine it better then to water it down to 20 or something and then distill it out til 40% to avoid a white colored liquid.

Raki is supposed to go white when you add water... which is the traditional way of serving it...
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Re: FLAVORING OF RAKI WITH ANISE

Post by Odin »

Mario,

I didn't think of that. Am thinking right now ... Will take some time.

Ultra,

I feel the need to improve upon yer English, sir!

It is not: "So there ain't any reflux ..."

But rather: "So there ain't no reflux ..."

;)

Always wanted to do that.

Odin.
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Re: FLAVORING OF RAKI WITH ANISE

Post by Mario84 »

Well Im doing this tomorrow (and then let it sit for a week), so I'll try the way you described it first, if it gets louched and cloudy I will dilute my result down to 20 and then distill it up again to 40... supposedly that should get it clear again...

according to alot of reading Ive done on Absinthe before.

I'll let you know what happens.

PS:
Funny fix on the proper use of "ain't" :mrgreen:
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Re: FLAVORING OF RAKI WITH ANISE

Post by Mario84 »

Odin wrote:Could you let me know if this works out for you? This is one recipe I did not do myself yet.
Yay! I finally found this recipe again! This, I'm sure, is the best formula available on the web. It's been years since I made this... back in 2012'ish, and I still remember and long for the flavor of this perfect Raki (or did you say it was Ouzo?). I labelled it as Raki anyway.

I have moved to the Raki/Ouzo part of the world, and I haven't even come by anything store-bought that is as as good as this was... almost, but not quite.

So to answer your question, this recipe worked!
And regarding my previous messages here... there was no danger of louching during production. The drink turns milky white only when served / when you water it down to below 50% abv.
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Re: FLAVORING OF RAKI WITH ANISE

Post by still_stirrin »

Thanks for the “bump” Mario.

This recipe is new to me and sounds quite tasty. And following Odin’s guidance has made me an excellent gin, so Raki/Ouzo should follow the same (successful) path.

Thanks Odin.
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Re: FLAVORING OF RAKI WITH ANISE

Post by Mario84 »

Cool :) Would be nice to see your feedback on the recipe as well. How it turned out for you.
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Re: FLAVORING OF RAKI WITH ANISE

Post by engunear »

I've messed with ouzo recipes for years. Previously used various blends of star anise, anise and fennel, added to alcohol, distilled multiple times adding more botanicals. Results inconsistent and not as good as a bottle of store bought Raki my next door neighbour gave me. My ouzo was not as strong flavoured as his and went cloudy at room temp when I used more botanicals. Got me thinking. If we were to think about this as a problem of physical chemistry, how would it look?

Ouzo is a solution of anethole in ethanol. The plant with the highest ratio of anethole to other compounds is star anise. See Wikopedia and other web sources.

What is the right proportion of botanicals? To simplify this question we need anethole of known concentration. We can't distil with alcohol, because that makes the problem more confused.

So: grind star anise, add to water and distill in a pot still. 300-500g is a good starting weight. Due to partial pressure, then anethole will come over with a lot of water, and float on the top like the oil it is. Add distillate to a standard wine bottle, best one with a slow taper to the top. Fill it too the top. The oil can be picked up in the neck with a syringe and a short piece of silicone tube, or a long hypodermic needle. You need to twist the bottle in a snap to release oil droplets from the glass. It gets fiddly dumping the water from beneath the oil to add more from the still, but you should get ~20 ml of clear oil.

Dilute oil to 10% concentration to make it easier to handle. So for 20ml oil, add 180ml 95% ethanol.

For the alcohol concentration, read some labels on bottles. My neighbour's Raki was 47.5%. So take equal parts of azeotrope ethanol and water. Or do whatever you like to get about that ratio. Use good alcohol, you can hide some sins but better to live clean.

Now by trial and error, I found that 2ml anethole per 750ml bottle suits my palate. Thats 20ml of the 1/10 solution per wine-bottle of 47.5% alcohol+water.

All my friends to whom I give ouzo comment on how much better it is than previous batches.

It should be possible to find a relationship between the onset of cloudiness, the alcohol content, the oil content and the temperature. So one could take an ouzo, add water slowly still it starts to cloud, then measure its alcohol content, then deduce its anethole content. Life has been too busy for me to attempt this.

I've also attempted oil separation with ground star anise. I got barely 2 ml oil from 400g starting material.

Hope that answers all questions above. Its tempting to try same method with anise seeds.
Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to make whiskey. I think that what we have to say has more lasting value.

Anyone who tells you measurement is easy is a liar, a fool, or both.
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Re: FLAVORING OF RAKI WITH ANISE

Post by engunear »

An afterthought: I bought a bottle of star anise essence online. "Not for Oral Use" or whatever. Made up some ouzo according to above recipe. It tasted fine but was quite cloudy. It seemed there was something else in there, not specified, other than the recommendation not to drink. It went down the sink.
Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to make whiskey. I think that what we have to say has more lasting value.

Anyone who tells you measurement is easy is a liar, a fool, or both.
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Re: FLAVORING OF RAKI WITH ANISE

Post by Mario84 »

engunear wrote:So: grind star anise, add to water and distill in a pot still. 300-500g is a good starting weight. Due to partial pressure, then anethole will come over with a lot of water, and float on the top like the oil it is. Add distillate to a standard wine bottle, best one with a slow taper to the top. Fill it too the top. The oil can be picked up in the neck with a syringe and a short piece of silicone tube, or a long hypodermic needle. You need to twist the bottle in a snap to release oil droplets from the glass. It gets fiddly dumping the water from beneath the oil to add more from the still, but you should get ~20 ml of clear oil.

Dilute oil to 10% concentration to make it easier to handle. So for 20ml oil, add 180ml 95% ethanol.

Now by trial and error, I found that 2ml anethole per 750ml bottle suits my palate. Thats 20ml of the 1/10 solution per wine-bottle of 47.5% alcohol+water.
Thank you! This fantastic, invaluable information!
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Re: FLAVORING OF RAKI WITH ANISE

Post by Saltbush Bill »

Here is an old recipe that's been kicking around the forums for years. Ive made a bit of this stuff and Ouzo drinkers usually like it.
If its not to your liking its not a bad starting point....you can experiment and work from there. Collect in small jars and stop when it gets cloudy. The nut meg comes through very strong at the end when it goes cloudy. Best not to use that cloudy jar or the nutmeg can be over powering.

Pastis/arak

Post by apsynt » Tue Jul 14, 2009 7:07 am

I have been doing this one for a while now and it's been rather popular. I cook mine in small batches on the stove.
A very unscientific recipe i use is

2.5L of neutral at about 45%
2 fistfuls of star anise
1 stick cinnamon
3 cracked cardamom pods
pinch of white and black pepper
2 sprigs of fresh fennel
half a nutmeg, cracked
4 cloves

I don't bother with suspending it in a basket as one does when making gin, just put all the ingredients together and distill. Generally i remove about 100ml of heads and stop collecting as soon as the output becomes cloudy.
Depending on how strong your anise it, you can dilute it to about 45% before it starts going cloudy. for a more attractive color add little bit of caramelized sugar.
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