Making essences at home

[TimT]

In preparation for a couple of upcoming brews, I've been fiddling around with a method I found online of precipitating the smells of a plant into an 'essence' that can then be bottled for use in brewing.

One problem with adding aromatic herbs to a brew, of course, is that often the smells - being gas - are lost straightaway in the fermentation. Another problem is it can be very hard to transfer the smell from the plant to the beer wort/wine must/whatever. If you add it at the end of boil, you may get some smell but then you may lose it during fermentation. if you add it during secondary fermentation, you may not have enough heat to get the smells out. So it's a bit of a catch 22.

Thankfully there seems to be a method by which you can get around this.

You need a stock pot, a colander, and a small pot that fits in the colander.

1) Put the colander in the stock pot.

2) Put the smaller pot in the colander.

3) Fill the stock pot with water to the base of the colander.

4) Throw in the herbs that you want to get the smell from into the water.

5) Invert the lid of the stock pot and put it on the pot. Then throw on the top of that some ice cubes.

6) Put the stock pot on the stove and turn it on.

7) Keep heating and boiling the water at the bottom and add more ice as the boiling continues; the site I got this info from said '2 to 3 trays of ice cubes'. (But I suspect most of the process will happen in the first few minutes of boiling anyway - that's when the smell coming from the stock pot is most intense; so you may not need that many ice cubes).

At the end of that, the small pot sitting in the colander will contain the essence you want. Simple! I've done this so far with lemon verbena and rosemary.

As far as I can work out, it works because the fragrances being boiled off the plant cool down when hitting the wall of ice and precipitate out in the pot.

My method may need a few tweaks: my stock pot lid has a hole in it so I suspect a bit of ice-water may leak through! And I don't have a seal on the lid so a lot of fragrance escapes as well. Of course, adding the essence to a brew at the end of all this will result in a slightly diluted beer or wine, so it's probably best for higher alcohol brews.

Anyone else tried this?

 

[Maheel]

you have made a very simple distillation system

you could make a simple seal for the stock pot
maybe even use a SS bowl instead of the pot lid

but remember that vapor will want to escape so you need a vent some how to release the pressure you are creating
you could consider using a simple s-bend / airlock as a vapour lock pressure relief type set up
you will loose "essence" to the vapor lock but

your next step would be to look at simple a copper leibig condensers etc and make an essential oil extractor .....
and then you get rid of the pressure issue as your just venting steam / essence direct to your condenser

other ideas would be to soak the herbs in alcohol and that will help with oils extraction (potential explosive vapors but...)
build a CARTER head an pass steam through your botanicals to remove oils / essence
then you maybe making something else..... lol

 

[nala]

In preparation for a couple of upcoming brews, I've been fiddling around with a method I found online of precipitating the smells of a plant into an 'essence' that can then be bottled for use in brewing.

One problem with adding aromatic herbs to a brew, of course, is that often the smells - being gas - are lost straightaway in the fermentation. Another problem is it can be very hard to transfer the smell from the plant to the beer wort/wine must/whatever. If you add it at the end of boil, you may get some smell but then you may lose it during fermentation. if you add it during secondary fermentation, you may not have enough heat to get the smells out. So it's a bit of a catch 22.

Thankfully there seems to be a method by which you can get around this.

You need a stock pot, a colander, and a small pot that fits in the colander.

1) Put the colander in the stock pot.

2) Put the smaller pot in the colander.

3) Fill the stock pot with water to the base of the colander.

4) Throw in the herbs that you want to get the smell from into the water.

5) Invert the lid of the stock pot and put it on the pot. Then throw on the top of that some ice cubes.

6) Put the stock pot on the stove and turn it on.

7) Keep heating and boiling the water at the bottom and add more ice as the boiling continues; the site I got this info from said '2 to 3 trays of ice cubes'. (But I suspect most of the process will happen in the first few minutes of boiling anyway - that's when the smell coming from the stock pot is most intense; so you may not need that many ice cubes).

At the end of that, the small pot sitting in the colander will contain the essence you want. Simple! I've done this so far with lemon verbena and rosemary.

As far as I can work out, it works because the fragrances being boiled off the plant cool down when hitting the wall of ice and precipitate out in the pot.

My method may need a few tweaks: my stock pot lid has a hole in it so I suspect a bit of ice-water may leak through! And I don't have a seal on the lid so a lot of fragrance escapes as well. Of course, adding the essence to a brew at the end of all this will result in a slightly diluted beer or wine, so it's probably best for higher alcohol brews.

Anyone else tried this?

Being a brewer, I would have thought your first attempt would be to extract hop oils for addition to your brews !
Have you tried this at all ?
I am attempting to find the best way to introduce flavour and aroma to my brews, this certainly is one that I have not tried.

 

[ArgM]

Man, I was just about to look up how to do this!
Thank you for posting... is the final product similar to herbal essential oils that come in the little bottles?

 

[TimT]

I haven't tried anything with hops yet beyond the conventional, well-known methods - full boil, 10 mins, end of boil, dry hop, etc.

What I've ended up with is a clear liquid - water, basically - that is very fragrant and aromatic. Tastes like water! It's probably not as strong as the commercial sorts, and maybe the smells will dissipate over time (I'm not sure). I also suspect they will seem more fragrant the warmer they are. Not sure what freezing will do to them.

I haven't used many commercial essences - beyond, of course, the ordinary cooking stuff like vanilla essence, etc. I noticed a quite good range recently at an organic store near us, Naturally on High - stuff like Bergamot essence, etc. Could be quite good to try those out.

I should make clear that I'm not thinking of making spirits - the process of which I'm not 100 per cent sure about anyway - just in capturing the smells and volatile parts of herbs that would be otherwise lost if used in beer and wine brewing. So I'll avoid using alcohol rather than water. The suggestion about sealing with a bowl instead of pot lid is quite helpful, thanks! The entire boil/precipitation process is very quick so the build up of pressures may not present too much of a problem. But certainly worth being wary about.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Spirits are not acceptable on this forum.

 

[TimT]

Exactly why I want to make it clear I'm not talking about the distillation of spirits - if a mod thinks I'm skirting too close to that topic I'm happy for the discussion to be amended or closed down.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Exactly why I want to make it clear I'm not talking about the distillation of spirits - if a mod thinks I'm skirting too close to that topic I'm happy for the discussion to be amended or closed down.

All good.

Not having a go..but distilling is a big no no on here

But..what your doing is good.

 

[lswhi3]

Hey man, do you have any idea how you would make passion fruit extract for use in secondary fermentation? I've had a couple of ideas to use it w galaxy and maybe some meads. But I've heard the top layer of flavour is generally lost during the extraction process. Cheers

 

[TimT]

Wow, I hadn't thought of that. You could try a tincture as well - chop up and chuck in the passionfruit into a strong neutral alcohol, vodka or the like. Or you could go this route and chop it up and chuck it into a pot with some water and proceed to make an essence as normal. The full fruit - skin and body - would probably be best, as some of the passionfruit flavour comes from the pith.

This method I suspect would be best for herbs and aromatic plants generally - smell, not flavour - since the smells are gas, something that would easily get lost. That said, I haven't thought about doing this with fruit yet.

 

[Dave70]

How do I say this without blotting my surprising record of 0 warning points..

There are certain instructional videos on u tube that go into great detail about extracting oils from plant material similar to, but not exactly the same as your method.

Not sure if the process would be suitable for your application, but the resultant product smells like a highly concentrated version of the original plant material. Apparently.