It's nice when other people do experiments for you. Reader Jonathan Faircloth started a blog called The Zymologic Table to record the trials and tribulations of making orange liqueur dust.
Though it's not my experiment, this is a continuing part of the Solid Liquids project, in which I am searching for ways to dehydrate liqueurs and find creative uses for them. The index page of all the experiments is here.
After a failed attempt at dehydration through standard means, Faircloth picked up some tapioca maltodextrin and used it to dehydrate a liqueur into a sugary form. After a few trials of his own, it worked.
He found that it worked at a 2:7 ratio of liqueur to tapioca maltodextrin. This might be a method to make dusts out of liqueurs and other alcohol to be used for rimming and other purposes when regular heat-based dehydrating doesn't work. (And as an added bonus, supposedly the alcohol is not removed in this method.)
As he was attempting to use an orange liqueur to rim a glass, he was dissappointed to find that when you do this, the orangeyness of orange liqueur goes away. So he added some orange zest into the tapioca malodextrin to get it back.
I have similarly found that the essential oils evaporate (they are very volatile even at room temperature after all) when you dehydrate with heat, and you can put them back with citrus zests. I even temporarily forgot about that and dehydrated nearly a bottle of Cointreau only to be reminded that orange liqueur when the orange goes away just tastes like sugar. Very expensive sugar.
Looks like I'll be adding some orange zest back into the mix as well.
Keep checking Faircloth's site for his further experiments.
I am one lucky son-of-a-gun. This September I visited Rome and the Amalfi Coast with PalliniLimoncello. Though we began the trip in Rome and went to the Amalfi Coast later, I'll explain the process of making limoncello in the proper order.
The Lemons of the Amalfi Coast
The lemons for Pallini are sfusato ("elongated") lemons, so-named for their tapered shape. They are also sometimes called feminine lemons because each side looks like a nipple. These are slightly different from Sorrento lemons that are more football-shaped.
These lemons are low in acid; very sweet. In fact we had an unsweetened lemonade made with them. It was tart, but still drinkable. Even the pith isn't that bitter- we had a 'salad' made with these lemons soaked in balsamic vinegar and salt – and you could eat the whole thing – fruit, pith, and rind.
But for limoncello purposes, they're interested in the skin of the lemons only. The skins of sfusato lemons are highly aromatic and rich in essential oils.
These lemons grow along the Amalfi Coast in a most improbable way. Actually, the whole coast doesn't make much sense – it is all incredibly steep and rocky, with sharp inclines from the mountains down to the ocean. Picture the drive along Highway 1 in California if people had build houses all the way down to the ocean.
Carved into the cliffs are terraced gardens on which they grow lemons, along with eggplants, grapes, tomatoes, olives, and everything else you can think of. It's a surprisingly productive area given that the base is just rocks.
But the cliff-side growing arrangement means lots and lots of sunshine for these plants. The lemons grow so big and so productively that if these were just normal trees growing on their own, the branches would almost surely snap beneath the weight of the fruit.
Thus the farmers have developed a system to support the lemon tree branches, a pergola made of chestnut wood. This forms a lemon tree umbrella of sorts, with hundreds of huge lemons dangling from above.
(Bonus cat picture!)
The terraced lemon groves present some difficulties in harvesting, as you'd imagine. The lemons are all picked by hand as they ripen, then must be carried uphill to the next road that can be pretty far when you've got a heavy crate of lemons on your back.
Processing Lemons
After the lemons are harvested, they're transported by truck along the windy (and terrifying to those of us scared of heights) road to the processing center. We visited the one Pallini uses: CastierAgrumi De Riso.
When the lemons come in to the factory, they are first washed and then sorted. The very best lemons are sold in crates to stores and restaurants. The rest are peeled to make limoncello.
To do this, they use a machine that peels two lemons at a time. It is hand-loaded and seems to frequently jam – no wonder with sticky, oily peels involved. In this video, you can see the machine working.
The peels that come out are then vacuum-sealed into bags and sent to Pallini to use.
Making Limoncello
Pallini's distillery (it's not actually a distillery as they don't distill there but a rectification plant; still I'll call it a distillery for the sake of clarity) is where they make limoncello from the lemon peels.
Though once there were 30 distilleries in Rome, Pallini is the only one left. Originally, the distillery was located a few hundred yards from the Pantheon in central Rome but now it is in an industrial park-type area a good 30-40 minutes drive from the city center.
To make the limoncello, first they soak the peels in high-proof alcohol (I think around 96%) to extract their flavor. Though they didn't tell us the exact time, I inferred the extraction takes less than a couple of days.
Then they blend this concentrated lemon alcohol with more neutral alcohol (that is distilled from Italian sugar beet molasses), water, and a sugar syrup (made from crystallized sugar beet sugar). To make the flavor pop, they also add essential oils from the same lemons.
Somewhere in the process, they homogenize the ingredients so they retain a fresh flavor and do not separate or oxidize. We tasted several other brands of limoncello and most had a slightly musty flavor of oxidation compared to Pallini.
Other Products
Pallini also makes a Raspicello (useful as a Chambord substitute, or perhaps in a Bramble?) and a Peachcello (for the Bellini). These are actually made by distilling the berries and peaches, and adding fruit juice or fresh berries back in at bottling time. The production seemed pretty interesting but we didn't go into it in detail.
Pallini makes around 150 products, which you'd never guess given the size of the distillery. The most famous one, however, is SambucaRomana. They created this brand but sold it to Diageo in the 1980s. They still produce it for Diageo though. It's actually a pretty interesting product on its own; a blend of distillates from three kinds of anise, elderflower, angelica, and other herbs and spices.
Anyway, that's it for my Pallini trip. Limoncello is an incredibly straight-forward liqueur made from very special lemons grown in an absolutely stunning place.
This summer I went to Sweden (twice this year!) with Purity vodka. Purity is located not far from Malmo, across the water from Copenhagen, in a building on the estate of Ellinge Castle.
Now, Ellinge doesn't look like a typical castle, but there has been one in some form here since the early 14th century when the area belonged to Denmark. The building changed a lot over the years, but it still has a moat.
Currently the castle owners live in a big house also on the property, but rent out the castle itself for weddings and other events. I got to sleep there one night. I've never slept somewhere with a moat before, so that was awesome.
The castle is beautifully furnished with antiques and paintings, including one of Jesus turning water into wine at a dinner party. That's not the only connection the castle has to alchemy: there has always been a distillery on the property, as was commonplace in farming areas. (The farmlands around the castle grow things like wheat, barley, and rye, but they are not used in Purity because they're not certified organic.)
Making Vodka
Purity is made in this little building just across the moat from the castle. It's a tiny building, but they only do one part of the process here. Purity is a blend of a neutral, column-distilled spirit with a flavorful house-distilled spirit, brought down to proof with a blend of natural mineral water and deionized water. At the distillery, they produce the custom distillate.
The distillate made at the castle is a blend of wheat and barley, which is combined and fermented at a brewery near Copenhagen that is certified organic. Once that mash is brought here, the work begins.
The still has a pot still base with two columns attached. The distillate passes through the pot, then continues through the columns in a batch process. Each column has eight plates in it. At each plate the spirit passing through touches it and condenses.
If my understanding of this still is correct, what makes it different from others is that 95 percent of the spirit that condenses at each plate doesn't drop down to the plate beneath it, but all the way down to the bottom of the column. They consider each plate a full distillation, so the pot, plus eight plates in each of the two columns is 17 distillations. They run this process twice, so they figure it as 34 distillations before they get the final spirit.
I don't place a lot of importance on advertised number of distillations (as opposed to the taste), but the math makes sense.
Speaking of taste, we tasted the core spirit that comes out of the still. It is incredibly flavorful, tasting of strawberry jam, bread dough, blueberry figs, and a finish that's all herbal and wintergreen. In the mouth, a spiciness leaps out. It's quite an amazing distillate, and once I tasted it on its own I can now taste all of that in the finished bottle of Purity.
It takes them 10 hours for the first distillation, and because their cuts are so small, it takes 7 of the first distillations to get enough low wines to do the second distillation, which takes 6 hours. So that means to get one 'batch' of the flavorful spirit for Purity, it takes 76 hours.
Purity also tastes and smells of minerals, and I suspect that is from the mineral water used to dilute it to proof. Blender Thomas Kuuttanen says that it reminds him of rain falling on brackish water, and I can totally see that.
In the process of developing Purity Kuuttanen tried to use all mineral water, but found some minerals came out of solution after bottling, and left a white ring around the neck of the bottle. His task was finding the right balance between mineral and de-ionized water so that this didn't happen.
We were talking at the distillery about how rare it is to have more than one ingredient used in the mash of a vodka. Purity uses wheat and barely. Reyka uses the same two ingredients. Hangar One blends grape distillate with neutral distillate (wheat I think).
Anyway, I'll be writing a lot more about Purity for the Tasting Panel magazine, so I'll be sure to link to those in the future.
This summer I visited the Destileria Serralles Puerto Rico, the home of DonQ Rum.
DonQ is distilled in the southern part of Puerto Rico, in Ponce. The distillery has been on the same site since 1865. As with most rum distilleries, it was once the site of a sugar refinery and the distillery was a small part of the overall operation. Puerto Rico stopped producing sugar in the 1980s and the distillery became the important business.
As with distilleries in the United States, during Prohibition Destileria Serralles was closed. After Prohibition ended, they rebuilt the distillery, this time with column stills to replace the previous pot stills. One of those distillation columns from 1934 is still in use today.
Making Rum
The molasses for DonQ is purchased on the open market; the low-sugar stuff from the Dominican Republic or thereabouts, and the high-test sugar-rich stuff from Gautemala. (I learned only recently that with improving technology and higher prices for sugar, they are stripping more sugar out of molasses so they need to suplement lower-quality molasses with special high-sugar stuff so that there is enough sugar in the liquid to ferment.)
The molasses is shipped into the port of Ponce and then transported to the distillery, where it is pasteurized to prevent any spontaneous fermentation.
It is then fermented in stainless steel fermenters with their own strain of yeast until it reaches 8-10 percent alcohol by volume. They distill two rums that are later blended; a "light" and "heavy" version. The lighter version ferments for a lesser time than the heavy.
The heavy rum is distilled in the original beer column (the first column of a multi-column still) from 1934. It looks just as old as it is.
The light rum is distilled in the newer, multi-column stills.
After distillation, the rum is aged. The barrels used at DonQ are used twice before they buy them: the first time by the bourbon industry (as with most rums, tequilas, and scotch because barrels can only be used ounce for bourbon by law), but also another time for "light whiskey" which I take to mean blended whiskey like Seagram's.
Thus there should be less wood influence from these barrels than on other products. Furthermore, they reuse them about 20 times and never rechar them.
The rums are aged at a few different proofs, aged separately as light or heavy-style rums, and some is aged as a "medium" rum; a blend of the two. There are also some solera-aged rums in ex-sherry barrels, which are added to some of the blends.
Sustainability Practices
Roberto Serralles is a sixth-gernation Serralles family member who holds a PhD in environmental sciences. He is responsible for making this distillery more eco-friendly with the goal of making it waste-free. If given the chance to see him speak, I highly recommend it because he is engaging, authentic, enthusiastic, and making a real difference. Some of the innovations he has helped develop are already being copied by other distilleries.
The DonQ website has a great overview of the sustainability practices in place, though from what we learned on-site many of these are evolving from how they are described there.
The carbon dioxide released during the fermentation process used to be captured and sold to use to carbonate sodas, but a change in legal regulations has made this undoable in the short term.
The distilled molasses "beer" is only 8-10 percent alcohol, then is distilled up to 75 – 90 percent. That leaves a lot of excess water with organic material leftover – during the height of their production 350,000 gallons of wastewater per day.
The goal is to separate out the organic matter from the water so that you can reuse the water. First they use anaerobic digesters, in which bacteria eat the organic matter and release biogass. (I want to write a book about distillery waste and call it "Everybody Farts".) This biogass is burned to produce heat at the distillery and reduces the distillery's oil consumption by about 50 percent.
The next stage is aerobic decomposition, which further reduces the organic matter and produces brownish water. They used water this for irrigation, but as I understand it the water isn't ideal, so they are replacing this system with a new membrane filtration system that Roberto Serralles was pretty proud of.
That and other systems are in development, but some of the development has been delayed due to a significant business change. You'll learn why in tomorrow's post.
No bison were harmed in the writing of this blog post.
This summer I flew to Warsaw with ZU vodka, known in the rest of the world as Zubrowka. Zubrowka is bison grass vodka; vodka flavored with grass. The stuff tastes like caramel and jasmine and hay, and makes apple juice taste like apple pie.
Unfortunately, that delicious flavor comes from coumarin, a naturally-occurring compound that is banned as a food additive in the US. It is also in the tonka bean, which is why we can't have a historically-accurate recreation of Abbot's Bitters in the US either. (See this NYTimes story for more on that.)
(Mmm, delcious Coumarin. Image from Wikipedia.)
Coumarin is a blood thinner (anti-coagulant), and it is used to make Coumadin, a medicine that some people with blood clot disorders have to take before flying. Ironically, one of the people on the press trip had to take a shot of Coumadin before coming to Poland. If they had real Zubrowka in the US, she could have just chugged a bottle.
They've recreated the flavor of Zubrowka in ZU, using naturally-derived ingredients. In a blind taste test you can guess which is which, but they're pretty close.
A Trip to the Forest
We took a train for a few hours from Warsaw to Bialystok, where the distillery is located. But before seeing that, we went to see the Bialowieza Forest where the bison live and the bison grass grows.
The forest has various levels of protection in different parts. The first visit we took to it was by carriage, to the most protected part. The carriages aren't just for old-timey charm: no mechanical transportation is allowed in the forest and you must be accompanyed by a licensed guide.
The reason this forest is special is that it has for centuries been the protected property of the kings. It was used as their personal hunting ground for bison and a food reserve for the army. The forest is a UNESCO biosphere preserve and on the World Heritage List.
The forest is quite pretty, with tall skinny trees. This is the type of forest that would have covered most of Europe long ago.
Looking for Bison in All the Wrong Places
But to actually see the bison, you've got to get up pretty early in the morning. At 5AM we drove into the forest (this time, outside of the strict reserve but still where bison can be found) and walked along a path looking for them.
Unfortunately, none were to be found. The guide says at this time of the year the bison go into the deep forest to hide from the mosquitoes and flies, the very same ones that were biting us ferociously.
But it wasn't all for nothing. We also went searching for bison grass. The bison grass for Zubrowka is hand harvested by 21 or 22 families who know secret spots to pick it. Apparently you can grow bison grass on farms, but it doesn't have the same aroma as the natural stuff.
We walked down a trail in the forest, veered off it, cut through the woods, and found a whopping three blades of bison grass. Obviously, this wasn't one of the spots where they harvest it. But still, success!
We did manage to see actual bison, though they weren't free-roaming. We went to a reserve (sort of an outdoor zoo) where they show off the bison and other forest animals. Hi bison!
At the Distillery
After our forest visit, we went to see the distillery in Bialystok. The place is huge, as they make a lot of vodka for their unflavored Zubrowka (not available in the US) as well as other brands. Interestingly, this is not the start-to-finish point for ZU and other brands.
Closer to the farmlands where the rye is grown, there are smaller distilleries that do the fermentation and initial distillation. Polmos Bialystok (the name of this distillery) refines the distillation and adds any flavoring.
The bison grass is stored in a dark, refrigerated room in big paper bags.
The grass used to flavor the vodka is soaked in alcohol and water in a big washing machine thing for a couple days. They make a concentrate of the bison grass flavor, then add whatever amount they need to the final blend.
The grass that's used to decorate each bottle (there is a blade of grass in each) is soaked in higher-proof alcohol to suck out all the coumarin. It's then dried and inserted by hand in the bottling line.
In Your Mouth
The way ZU/Zubrowka is most commonly consumed is mixed with apple juice in a drink called the Szarlotka. It tastes kinda like apple pie. It's dumb and fun and more American bars should offer it. In Poland the apple juice was pretty cruddy, and it would certainly be improved with unfiltered apple juice.
In yesterday's post in the Solid Liquids Project (project index here) I had expanded beyond dehydrating Campari into dehydrating other liqueurs, namely X-Rated Fusion Liqueur, Wild Turkey American Honey, Irish Mist, and Midori. These are all part of the Skyy Spirits portfolio.
Of these four, only Midori crystallized like Campari had. I tried several methods to make the others crystallize but failed for the large part. I went over those in yesterday's post.
(Note: Before you get too deep into this, I just want to warn you that at this point I haven't figured out a solution to this problem and I welcome your suggestions.)
Nothing was working to make the others crystallize, but then inspiration hit.
Inspiration: What Do These Liqueurs Have in Common?
I realized that two of the liqueurs – Wild Turkey American Honey and Irish Mist – are sweetened with honey!
Furthermore, though I have no proof of this, I suspected that X Rated Fusion Liqueur may be sweetened with fruit juice.
Perhaps these other forms of sugar do not crystallize, or don't do so in the same way that cane sugar/sucrose does.
But first, I figured I should test the theory that X Rated Fusion Liqueur does not crystallize in the same way that known fruit juice-sweetened liqueurs do not crystallize. I placed X Rated Fusion, Hypnotiq, and Courvoisier Rose into cupcake cups and baked them at 140F for about 36 hours.
Courvoisier Rose came the closest to crystallizing, being a dense and sticky puck of liqueur. The other two were just gooey.
Though this doesn't necessarily prove anything, it's a clue that fruit juice-sweetened liqueurs don't crystallize the same way cane sugar/sucrose-sweetened liqueurs do.
A Further Test
While I was performing these experiments, I learned of the Stovetop Crystallization Method previously discussed. That method seems pretty foolproof, so I decided to test it on both X Rated Fusion Liqueur and on Wild Turkey American Honey just to be sure they don't crystallize even at high candying temperatures.
X Rated Fusion turned from pink to brown to black.
And even at high temperatures, it just formed a thick molasses-like candy syrup that would solidify as soon as you removed it from heat. These sugar pucks do not make good sugar crystals even after you crush them. The resulting sugar/powder is just as sticky as a syrupy liquid.
Wild Turkey American Honey performed similarly, except it does not turn black. It's more like a caramel at the end.
Again though this doesn't prove anything, it may be a clue as to which type of liqueurs do and do not form crystals when you dehydrate them.
In the next set of experiments, I'll look at a couple other honey liqueurs to see if they similarly do not crystallize while other liqueurs do.
So far in the Solid Liquids Project (project index here) I've been experimenting with the best way to get liqueurs into a solid/powder/sugar form.
I have performed all of these experiments with Campari so far, but now it's time to try some other liqueurs. Since Skyy Spirits is sponsoring this project, I began with other liqueurs from the company.
I put four liqueurs into the food dehydrator: X-Rated Fusion Liqueur, Wild Turkey American Honey, Irish Mist, and Midori.
After a standard amount of time (24-36 hours), only Midori had crystallized.
Second Attempt: A Long Time in the Dehydrator
The others remained partially liquid, like a thick syrup.
So I put them back in the dehydrator for another two days. They never crystallized, but when I let the trays cool, most of the liqueur did turn solid, forming almost a plane of glass that easily cracked.
I broke this up, but these liqueurs were still very, very sticky and would not be useful for rimming glassware and other solid uses.
Third Attempt: Using the Oven
Next I tried to use the oven to see if the temperature was the problem; perhaps these liqueurs needed higher temperatures to crystallize? I took the sticky solid liqueurs from the dehydrator and put them in the oven at 170. The result was just a sticky puck of gooey liqueur. Still not crystallized.
Then I repeated the oven attempt, this time using liquid liqueur (last time I took it from the dehydrator after that didn't work) but set at the lowest temperature, 140 Fahrenheit. This also did not achieve crystallization.
Fourth Attempt: Adding More Sugar to the Liqueur
What if, I thought, the problem is that there isn't enough sugar in the liqueur to crystallize? To test this theory (assuming it would fail, because as the liqueur dehydrates the water and alcohol disappear, making a concentrated sugar solution so it shouldn't matter how much sugar is in there as long as there is some) I added sugar to Wild Turkey American Honey.
This liqueur wouldn't actually hold much additional sugar. I added one part sugar to two parts Wild Turkey American Honey and it would not fully dissolve into solution.
So I gave it a hard shake and put it in a cupcake cup and put it in the oven at 170F. After a day it mostly crystallized, but still left a slightly sticky puck of non-solid liqueur at the bottom.
When I ground up this sugar in a spice grinder, it became a powder, but the powder was incredibly sticky. You couldn't use it to rim a glass or anything like that. In the storage container I put it in, it quickly formed a solid gooey mass.
I was slightly despondent: Only two out of five liqueurs that I tried to dehydrate were successful.Would these methods only work on a fraction of liqueurs?
But then inspiration hit….
To keep this post from being too long, I'll post the second half of it tomorrow.
In the continuing study of sugar, today we'll look at how sugar is made today.
According to Sugar.org, this is how sugar is made from either beets or cane.
For sugar cane:
❧ Grinding the cane to extract the juice; ❧ Boiling the juice until the syrup thickens and crystallizes; ❧ Spinning the crystals in a centrifuge to produce raw sugar; ❧ Shipping the raw sugar to a refinery where it is, ❧ Washed and filtered to remove remaining non-sugar ingredients and color; and ❧ Crystallized, dried and packaged.
Beet sugar processing is similar, but it is done in one continuous process without the raw sugar stage. The sugar beets are washed, sliced and soaked in hot water to separate the sugar-containing juice from the beet fiber. The sugar-laden juice is purified, filtered, concentrated and dried in a series of steps similar to sugar cane processing.
The below illustration I took from the pamphlet on Sugar.org called "How Well Do You Know Sugar?" located at this link.
(Click for larger size pop-up. Image property of Sugar.org.)
The Sugar Spirit Project is sponsored by Bacardi Rum. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index, click on the logo above or follow this link.
In the Sugar Spirit Project we've looked at the history of sugarcane and sugar production (project index here).
In this post we'll look at sugar production today. Some of this information may be out of date due to the date of my reference books/websites, so please take it all with a grain of salt.
Nowadays, sugar is not longer a major export in the Caribbean except for Guyana, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba.
In India, the sugar industry is not large plantation-based but from small peasant holdings. The cane is processed by private companies or cooperatives. This is because citizens were already occupying the land and couldn’t be forced off when sugar cane was planted.
In China sugar is not an item of mass consumption. It is also not a plantation culture.
In Cuba, after Fidel Castro’s revolution, they increased minimum wage for cane cutters, and expropriated sugar plantations and mills. Keep in mind US interests controlled much of the sugar cane production in Cuba. So the US retaliated by importing sugar from elsewhere. 82% of Cuban sugar was exported to the US so it was a major economic problem. Eventually they sold it to Eastern European countries.
But communist employment didn’t inspire the hard labor required to cut sugar, so the harvests did poorly. Eventually the harvest was militarized. Then when the Soviet Union crumbled so too did 85% of their sugar exports. Half of its 156 sugar mills closed and 60% of its fields were converted to vegetable farms or cattle fields.
Brazil is today’s largest sugarcane producer. In the 1970s due to oil shortages, sugar cane was processed into fuel as well as sugar.
The world's biggest sugarcane producers in order are Brazil, India, China, Thailand, Pakistan, Mexico, Colombia, Australia, Argentina, and the Philippines. Half of the supply comes from Brazil and India.
The sugar industry in Brazil employs over 1 million Brazilians and is more than 10% of the country’s agriculture. Gas there is required to contain at least 25% ethanol. About half of sugarcane grown is converted into ethanol; most of the rest is exported.
It takes 3 days to transform sugarcane into ethanol.
In the US, corn yields a ratio of 1.3 units of energy produced vs. expended to produce it. Beet sugar yields 8.3. Yet corn is cheaper to grow so it is grown instead.
Per hectare (2.47 acres) sugar cane yields about 20 tons of dry material, half of which is in sugar of some form; the other half is bagasse – trash for fuel, etc.
Four U.S. states produce sugar cane:Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana and Texas. Sugar beet farms can be found in California, Colorado, Idaho,Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota,Oregon, and Wyoming.
According to Sugar.org, we now use more of other sweeteners (I'm guessing high fructose corn syrup) than sugar from cane and beets. "Sugar remains the predominate sweetener in every country except the United States, where in recent decades man-made sweetening agents have been created and mass produced."
The Sugar Spirit Project is sponsored by Bacardi Rum. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index, click on the logo above or follow this link.
It's nice when other people do experiments for you. Reader Jonathan Faircloth started a blog called The Zymologic Table to record the trials and tribulations of making orange liqueur dust. 
