ouzo, from scratch

[Kal]

Where I walk around my area (western sydney) there are alot of wild anise plants. They made me want to make ouzo. So this summer when they started to seed, I harvested some to give ouzo a try.

All up I collected 200g of seed, as seen here:

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I then took the hearts of a neutral run, in this case about 3 litres at ~93%, and macerated the seed in the neutral for 5 days:

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After 5 days I put it in the still, filtering out all the seeds. Added 20L of water and ran it through with 1 bubble plate installed. I used the bubble plate just to up the abv a bit, and to allow me to control the abv a bit during collection. Collected it over an hour starting at 80% and dropping down to 60% by the end. I was tasting it off the still while I was running it, and towards the end it didn't taste as good, so I didn't bother collecting too many tails, and in the end I didn't mix in the last litre or so that I collected.

Seen here is the final output, about 3.5L diluted down to 52%. I had to dilute it slowly, adding some water then giving it a good stir, as when I did some testing it clouded up with the louche effect, and I wanted to avoid this effect till drinking time :-D

Seen here is the final product, with a glass with a watered down shot showing the louche effect. Tastes better than I thought for a first crack using no recipe, just some general ouzo reading from the net. To be honest I can't remember drinking any ouzo for the last 20 years, so I got nothing to compare it to :))

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[WalterWhite]

Takes me back to holidays in Greece and Cyprus seeing this ... Good work mate.
I might have to source some seed and try this myself

[Woodsy71]

Good stuff mate!

Ouzo rocks!

Next time try adding some dry fennel seed and some star anise to your aniseed, it will get you that step closer to the real Mccoy :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Just try to keep the total amount of seed to no more than 20gms/litre.

This will prevent louching in the bottle.

You don't want louching until your ouzo hits ice or your mixer!

Love your effort mate

:obscene-drinkingcheers:

[Kal]

One thing I was suprised with was the amount of flavour that carried over after the "potstill"

I'd read that the maceration was everything from 10g/liter to 100g/liter, and from 1 day to 1 week. In the end I chose a relatively large amount (~65g/l) for a rather long time (5 days). This amount isn't really needed, ALOT of flavour came through!

If I start adding other flavours I'd be more inclined to macerate them individually in neutral first to understand the flavour profile more. Even a small amount without a distill (just diluting down straight from the maceration mix) should give me an understanding of the flavours. I've got 3 liters of this stuff now so I can always blend other flavours in later I guess :)

[Woodsy71]

Maceration times depend on whether you distill with botanicals in the boiler or not. No more than 24hrs is needed if you have everything in the pot.

Not tried individual blends before, just variants on the seed ratios.

If you give it a go, id love to hear the results.

[Zzpop]

There is a great recipe in tried and proven have done it a few times now and it is good shit!