I made some modifications to the recipe. Here it is:
3 cups of water
1 cup of brown sugar
1 rounded teaspoon of cinnamon
6 thumb nail sized shavings of orange zest
1.5 tsp of pure vanilla extract
3/4 tsp of pure almond extract
1/2 tsp of ground allspice
1/2 tsp of ground cloves
50 drops of burnt sugar
1.5 cups of high ABV alcohol -- Neutral or rum is fine.
Put all ingredients in a medium sauce pan EXCEPT the vanilla extract, almond extract, burnt sugar, and high ABV alcohol. Bring to a boil stirring often; Reduce by 1/2. You should have roughly 1.5 cups of syrup. I then add the syrup to this contraption.
Made from a mason jar, solder in a couple copper tubes and you are done.
Once you have done that and mixed the alcohol with the syrup well. Screw on the lid and place it in the freezer. This is why you need the ABV of the solution above 40% -- you do not want it to freeze.
Placing it in the freezer allows the particles to settle faster. However, I do not believe it to be essential...so one could just let it set for a while longer. Let this sit UNDISTURBED in the freezer over night. Remove from the freezer carefully and place at the edge of you table/counter.
The crud at the bottom may freeze...so letting it sit on the counter for a bit might help you to start the siphon easier.
The OPEN ended copper tube coming off the top of the mason jar is how you begin the siphon. Gently blowing into the tube forces the essence at the bottom of the jar to flow/climb up the copper tube; if you look close, you can see that I drilled several small holes on the top surface of the tube inside the jar-- I also crimp soldered the end of this tube. This is an easy way to start a siphon without disturbing the sediment crud. That being said, you will of course get a small amount to flow through the holes at the beginning of the siphon. Simply stop the flow by plugging the bottom tube with your finger and dump the first ounce or so...inspect and make sure it is coming out sediment free before you commit to collect the rest.
***EDITED TO ADD: I stopped the siphon a bit early. There were some floaters on the surface that I did not want to collect. Again, just use your finger to plug the take off-- dump the sediment crud.
Now, set up some mason jar coffee filters -- 2 or 3 and run the essence through to remove what the siphon did not. Even with the added alcohol, it can take a couple hours -- so the more filters you set up the better:
Collect the filtered essence and put it into a medium sauce pan and reduce until all the alcohol is boiled off. ***WARNING*** Even at %40-%50 ABV it can be dangerous to boil off alcohol on a stove top--especially when cooking with an open flame. 1.5 cups of alcohol is plenty enough to cause a fire. Take safety precautions.
Once you have reduced the alcohol off and cooled a bit, add vanilla extract, almond extract, and burnt sugar. You will end up with a rum essence as dark as a dungeon.
