extracting flavor from cognac, rum, etc...

[danielhjeffery]

Hello all!
After extensive googling and searching forums with no success, I have decided to join this forum and ask the experts. I need to extract flavoring from cognac, and potentially others such as rum and brandy. I work with flavors for a living and could certainly replicate it, but I would prefer to use the real deal. Is there any distillation procedure to concentrate the flavor? Maybe distilling at a low temp for a long period of time? I have access to much lab glassware and tools.

Any and all help is appreciated!

[FullySilenced]

Not sure if the flavor/smell/components your looking for are in the H2O portion of the brandy or in the ethanol... maybe try freezing and removing the H2O portion first see whats left is something your after...

If not heat and remove the ethanol... see what you got left..

*****second thought vacuum extraction of the ethanol will induce no heat to the product destroying the flavors or aromas that you may truly want...

This is all I have thinking off the cuff...

have fun,

FS


Edit, you may want to look at the perfume industry and see how they save the aromas of specific herbs and flowers while using ethanol as the extract mechanism again off the cuff thinking..?

[Capt-Cudellez]

Hi JD, whats your goal? are you just wanting the alcohol out, and the flavour left? Sorry if I have mis-read your post.

Why not just reduce it on the stove, boiling off the alcohol and leaving the a concentrated reduction like you would for a recipe.
Be careful not to burn your house down

[Almanac]

+1 CC and you could distill a small volume if you have the glassware then replace the volume of alcohol removed with distilled water. However, I think you'll find that without the ethanol the flavour will not be anything like the original.

Alcohol free Brandy, Whisky, Gin etc, or Synthahol, would be a huge seller around the world but I guess someone would have made that connection if it was that easy

AM

[danielhjeffery]

I am looking to use the flavor of cognac in a food product. The goal is to remove as much of the alcohol from the cognac as possible, so it forms a flavor concentrate. I'd prefer not to concentrate it on the stove, because as the cognac heats much of the flavor is released. Considering I am looking to use a very (very) expensive cognac, I'd like to keep as much as possible.

[FullySilenced]

Vacuum distilling will not let the flavors out.. but will remove the ethanol...

Do a little googling ...

[Myles]

The problem you have is this. High efficiency distilling removes all the flavour.

Lower efficiency distilling carries some of the flavour from the wash into the product. Yes you could subsequently remove the alcohol, but in the process the flavour also changes.

Just pour a shot of spirit and leave it out overnight, no heating, just allow the alcohol to evapourate. The flavour changes, and it will still not be concentrated enough for you.

You would probably need to remove the alcohol and then further process (freeze distilation possibly) to remove some of the water. Slow freexing would probably be more effective at not removing the flavour by allowing the formation of bigger ice crystals.

There is a lot of flavour left in the wash - but how to get it out is a problem.

[Phantom]

If you've got the lab glassware and so on, then a magnetic stirrer/heater, condenser, receiving flask and 2 pipe unions one with a small pipe take off so you can connect the receiving flask union to a vacuum pump and bingo vacuum distilling on a lab scale.

Expensive brandy would be relative.....I know of a bloke who had a double jereboam of a good vintage, I just didn't have the £87000 he sold it for.....

Vacuum distillation works well, and at much lower temperature than normal distillation so shouldn't affect the flavour too much.

Then as Myles suggests, some freeze distillation of the alcohol free residue would, I'd have thought, do the trick. But you'd need to play to find out whether it concentrated the flavour enough to be of use......