Distillation as a Method of Filtering Liqueurs

[dback021]

Distillation as a Method of Filtering Liqueurs

I've been making liqueurs for a couple of years now, macerating fruit or herbs and spices in vodka, brandy and cognac, and then adding sugar syrup and filtering the result through a series of progressively finer filters—sieve, cheesecloth, muslin, and coffee filters. This hobby has been very successful and satisfying with the exception of one major problem area—filtering.

Filtering a liqueur made with herbs and spices is no problem, but in filtering some of the fruit ones it has been near impossible to strain out enough of the solids to get a smooth result. Prune has so far been the toughest one.

My question is whether, by applying heat to a still with the liqueur inside, I could essentially separate all the liquid out of the liqueur, leaving the solids behind. I don't want the ABV of the end result to be any higher; I simply want the end result to be free of solids. Distillation seems to me a rather elegant solution to the problem, though I have a couple of safety concerns:

Is distilling something that is 30-40% ABV to begin with dangerous? In other words, is applying heat to that a recipe for disaster?

Would there be any reason to discard heads or tails if the original liqueur was fine to drink to begin with? In other words, would the application of heat to the liqueur cause any undesirable compounds to form that weren't there before?

I apologize if these questions have been covered before, but I could not find answers to them in searching through the forum. Thank you very much for your help—I really appreciate it!

[Dnderhead]

if you add fruit and redistill you will have a lite fruit flavor like that of schnapps,or flavored vodka.

[frozenthunderbolt]

it would also loose all sweetness and you might burn the sugars from the syrups onto the inside of your still imparting off flavors

[Rod]

I use cotton balls from the chemist

stuff one into a funnel very tight

my liqueurs come out clear and bright

[stillcyco]

I use a vacuum pump and buchner funnel, something like this: http://amzn.com/B007RO5A3E" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

It can be a pain to filter a large volume, but it comes out crystal clear. It helps to do it in stages, from coarse to fine filter. I use a strainer and coffee filters a couple times to get the larger particulates. The filter papers in a buchner funnel quickly clog so its good to filter as much as possible prior to running through the vacuum filter.

[Durace11]

grain/hop bag for the big chunks and coffee filter for the fine stuff, never had a problem except the coffee filters can be real slow.

[dback021]

Thank you everyone for your responses. I'll consider trying the cotton ball method and the vacuum pump method. It sounds like distilling the liqueur using a pot still might also work, though I'd wait to sweeten it until after distillation.

Again, I'm usually able to do fine with filtering, but certain fruits like prune just leave the mixture very thick and make it difficult to strain using the filtering methods I described, unless you are incredibly patient, have lots of time (hours), and are okay with losing a lot of volume in the process.

Thanks again for your input—I really appreciate it.