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Amount of Dried Mint to use in Liqueur?

edited January 2016 in General

Hi I am working with a friend who is a mint grower and peppermint tea producer to make a liqueur. Can anyone give me a suggestion on maceration rates and timing to target our trials? Cheers!

Comments

  • Would the peppermint work well through Gin basket?? If you macerate how will you stop the discolouration of the spirit and the bitterness of the plant material coming through? Could you just do an oil extraction and add back to your spirit. Or pack a bubble T with the peppermint and distill through it. That way you'll get clear spirit and flavour.

  • All great points @Johnboy - I don't have a gin basket but I can jerry something out of a bubble tee and a screen which is a great idea - thanks.

    I have some base recipes from research and am going to play with a mix of dried and fresh mint masceration, gin basket style distillation and also redistillation of mascerated spirit plus blends of the various styles (if warranted). i am not too worried about colour, I am primarily interested to see what gives the best taste.

  • I was literally doing this just last week.

    I had a 4" tee with a TC metal plate instead of sight glass on top of the RC with a mesh gasket in between wit a bag holding all the peppermint. You want tat separation wit the mesh gasket in order to not block the vapor path with the bag. This is actually a really decent way to go about things until one can afford a GB4 or your system is too small for it, you can put it anywhere between the condensers as long as you can drain it someway, in my case, back down through the column. Bag changes are super easy.

    I had to put a full ounce of dried pepper mint in in order to get a good minty scent and taste, below that I wasn't getting much of anything which surprised me. The same happened with hops and when I switched to the offset, the full ounce of hops was over powering all other botanicals and I had to seriously cut back.

    Anyway the mint liqueur came out very nicely for just screwing around at work. Used the Still Spirits liqueur base A and some food colouring for kicks. Looks ridiculous and tastes decent so it does its job.

  • Nice post Luke.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • Cheers @Kill_Devil_Spirit_Co . I guess you put the column into full reflux and open the 4"TC blank plate to change the bag? A couple of questions please... - how tightly are you packing the bag? Is it loose and sitting flat on the plate or is it bound tighter to retain a round shape? - what do you use to make the bag from?

    Thanks!

  • Yeah just put it into full reflux and youre good to go. The bag is looselying packed to avoid path blocking. It is just a hopping bag for brewing. You can find them on amazon or any brew shop cheap.

  • here's the ridiculousness in all its glory

    image

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    600 x 800 - 77K
  • That is absolutely fantastic - how is the color holding up?

  • Primary Color exemplified.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • no issues at all hasn't changed a bit

  • Looks like Midori

  • yeah I didn't think 2 drops was gonna go that far but should have known better. We did the original contract work for Modern Martini and it consisted of working with colouring. One drop of that stuff stained the concrete floor and whenever we mopped that area would just turn pink no matter how many times we tried to get it off haha

    NEVER AGAIN

  • I had a guy pour blue into the rubber gloves I was working with once.
    As soon as I slipped them on I realised what he'd done but it was too late.
    Two weeks of smurf hands.

  • Standard punishment for being a dick on the rigs is food dye in boots

  • Prawn paste under the inner sole is better.

  • I soaked mint with 120 proof, the color was close, but not quite that... faded at 6 months... I want to try orris root or others to see if they fix the color..

  • how much mint did you use? any grassy notes?

  • What did it taste like ?

  • fresh mint, I assume @CothermanDistilling ? how long did you soak for - just for the colour or for the flavour too? Cheers for any insight you can share!

  • mason jar loosely filled with leaves, wanted to try some unsweetened schnapps type stuff... will re-visit it now that I have far better neutral than i did 3-4 years ago...

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