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Recently spent a nice evening with friends at a local bar. By the time I was in my forties, it was the first time I had a chance to “smoke” an alcoholic drink.
The culture of drinking sambuca, of course, struck me, and the liquor itself made an excellent impression. The fact that sambuca is considered a liqueur surprised me the most.
The interesting taste and unusual bright aftertaste of this drink is difficult to compare with anything, and all these manipulations with ignition and smoking are generally something bewitching. Therefore, it became interesting for me to cook sambuca myself.
I have long been fond of the production of homemade wine, whiskey and all kinds of liqueurs, but why not expand the range of homemade products?
The story was sent by my subscriber Anatoly.
Method for making sambuca
Making sambuca is a cross between making tincture, liquor and vodka. I had to work on all fronts, so I can say that sambuca is far from the easiest drink in terms of preparation complexity. I would divide the production of liquor into several stages:
- Distillation of the base.
- Infusion.
- Distillation of tincture.
- Adding missing ingredients.
The most difficult thing I had to face was the purchase of anise, the very spice that gives sambuca an exquisite aroma and a peculiar tart taste. Anise costs a penny, but try to find it.
Having traveled all over the city, I realized that one cannot do without the Internet. I had to order seasoning from the capital, while I paid much more for postal services than for the spices themselves.
Base distillation and infusion
For the base of the tincture, we need alcohol, but it would be better to overtake the rectified oneself to be sure of its proper purification. Any mash will do, even the most budgetary, made according to the principle “sugar, yeast and water are our best friends.”
But I take the distillation process itself quite seriously. The selection of heads is carried out meticulously and slowly in order to obtain the purest possible product at the end.
Raw alcohol is distilled twice, even though there will still be one more distillation. The higher the quality of the base, the better any tincture.
It will be a shame to spend so much time and effort, and get a liquor of dubious quality, which will smell not of anise, but of acetone. Also, of course, fragrant and authentic, but not worth it.
You can also add some nutmeg and clove flowers
Next, we need to prepare the tincture. To do this, I took my rectified 70 ° and diluted it with distilled water to 42-44 °. I poured 8 liters of the base into a 10-liter bottle and added various spices and other ingredients:
- Berries of black elderberry – 1 g.
- Anise seeds – 2 g.
- Lemon zest – 150 g.
All this was thoroughly mixed, tightly closed with a lid and put away in a dark, warm place for a week.
Distillation of tincture
A week later, the tincture acquired a characteristic dark brown hue and a sharp, not even particularly pleasant aroma. The next step is filtering the tincture. This can be done very simply, just pass the contents of the bottle through a cotton-gauze filter.
Attention! In no case should you try the tincture! Such a concentration of anise, and even more so elderberry ether, is dangerous for the body! Raw elderberry is an old known poison! Therefore, be sure to keep the tincture out of the reach of children!
Next, I simply poured the filtered tincture into the cube and overtook it. The main thing is to do it carefully, avoiding the tails, as the tails will go muddy and insanely smelly.
At night, of course, it burns more gracefully
The final touches
At the output we get about 3 liters of fragrant 75 ° sambuca. The smell is no longer as sharp as that of the tincture, it is pleasant and a little tart. I then diluted the product to 50° with distilled water.
To prepare a real sambuca, only one ingredient is missing – sugar. There are several options: use sugar, syrup or fructose.
I chose fructose, as sugar can cloud the liquor and give it an unpleasant yellowish hue. Having added 300 grams of fructose per liter of the drink, I sent the sambuca to re-infuse in the closet for a month.
When it came time to taste, I was surprised by the result. Very gentle and pleasant taste, noble smell – no worse than elite drinks from world manufacturers. But! I overdid the fructose!
I recommend adding less sugar, otherwise there will be a sweetish aftertaste. It remains only to decide on the question of the technique of drinking the resulting drink. How do you drink sambuca?