Extractor in Practice: Extracts, Essences, and Solubility Control

Translate extractor theory into production choices. Learn when to stop at extract, when to redistill into essence, and how solvent strength steers extraction chemistry.

Quick summary

Core principle

So when we first got this Eureka moment, Willem of sharing it, and me of understanding that actually we can scale this up above glassware level to 500 liters, 100 liters, 50 liters, whatever, of course the challenge became, let's build one, right? And that's the fun about having a factory and building our own stuff.

We basically dropped everything, I think it was on Monday, and we said what we need to do is build the first extractor. We're not going to call it Soxhlet because nobody can pronounce that, it's an extractor and that's what it does.

Because we were going to get, I think it was on the Friday, customers over from Scotland, and they have a very good strawberry liqueur. And I think strawberries should be something we can extract, and they come and they can have a look at it, and if they like it, we learn something, and if they don't, we learn something as well.

So we dropped everything, started building the first extractor. Now they didn't come to improve the strawberry liqueur, they visited us because they wanted to make their own alcohol.

So they came to look at, I think, a 2000 in order to make their alcohol that they could then use for the strawberry liqueur. So we're talking for a few hours, husband and wife team from Scotland, lovely people, customers.

Not then, but now they are, and they were saying like, what's the guy doing in the corner there? And that was our laboratory manager, William, working with the first extractor that we built, basically was ready on Thursday.

Friday they come in, we bought all the strawberries we could find in the city here, and we started extracting them. So I said, hey, go check them out.

They said, oh, that's an amazing coincidence, he's making strawberry liqueur. I said, well, not really a coincidence, we knew you were doing this, we knew you were coming, we wanted to take advantage of your expertise and tell us what do you think, how is it, do you like it?

They tasted it and they said, wow, it's got about 25% more flavor than the way we make it. Okay, well, that's the first positive, so thank you.

Then I asked like, so how do you make it? I said, well, we buy alcohol, we dilute it, and then we put the strawberries in, we let it sit for six weeks, we strain the strawberries off, we measure everything according to the alcohol percentage, add sugar, mix it, that's it.

So I said, how long does the whole process take? Well, six weeks of maceration and then another week to make it.

I said, we just made this in six hours. And I remember her saying like, and we need that one as well.

So we are now very confident, right? Strawberries are amazing, the extractor is the invention of the century, and wow, we're onto something.

So the next day or the day after, no, I think it was Monday after the weekend, we had a professional taster in, and I had to sort of say, I'm going to lure him in, because he likes to come here every now and then, but he doesn't want to taste strawberries. This is one of the things, if you taste strawberries, they're either flat, because they're overcooked, because it's a fragile fruit, or they're artificial.

How it works in practice

If I have artificial strawberries, as a professional taster, I can't work for a week, because my palate is thrown off. So I said like, well, of course, it's not going to be strawberries, but we have a new technology we want you to judge. And then he came and, well, we just presented him the strawberries.

He was angry at first until he tried it, because he did try it. And he said like, wow, this is amazing. This is like closing your eyes and having somebody cut a fresh strawberry next to your nose.

The flavors were amazing, the efficiencies, six hours versus six weeks were amazing. So it worked for gin, and it worked for strawberries. So we get even more hyped, right?

Hyped up, at least in ourselves, and energetic, because even the professional taster was like, and I need one. And I'm going to put strawberries in my garden, because this is amazing. So a week later, a couple from Ireland comes by, and they want to make a gin that includes, I think you call them blackberries, a bit like strawberries, but dark blue, black, and with little berries all grouped together into one little bit of fruit.

So we're like, no problem, man. We'll, sure, it will be amazing. So we start doing it, all confident.

At the end of the day, we're almost in tears, because the product was harsh and undrinkable, really undrinkable. Like the tannins were like melting the teeth out of your mouth, like tea, overly strong, times 10, like red wine after you open it. the tannins can hit your teeth in a certain way.

So we're like, Jesus, what just happened? Like, we're a bit in shambles there. We're about to toss it, and just before we toss it, I smell it.

So instead of drinking it, I basically smell it. And it smells like blackberries. It smelled beautifully like blackberries.

So all of a sudden, with that insight, we could figure out what went wrong. The extractor is so good at extracting that if you put something in there that doesn't have tannins, like strawberries, well, then it doesn't extract tannins. It does extract all the color and flavor.

So if you look at the strawberry, actually see through the strawberry after they're extracted. But brambles and blackberries, they're much higher in tannin levels. Extractors, they don't judge flavor.

They basically just extract, and they're very good at it. So we had extracted all of the tannins from the blackberries. And tannins, above a certain level, make the drink undrinkable.

So here we are with an undrinkable drink. And then we smelled it, and the smell was great. And that learned us because if you distill, you also create vapors that you then liquefy somewhere else.

So couldn't that smell represent what we would distill off the extract? Tannins do not come over in distillation. So we took the extract, the blackberry extract, put it in, I think the iStill Mini, redistilled it, and now the distillate comes out clear because that's the way it does.

The tannins stayed behind in the boiler, and all of a sudden we had something amazing, bramble or blackberry-like. Just as good as the strawberries were, only a different product, a different procedure. First thing we made with the strawberries was an extract.

The second thing that we did with blackberries is that we redistilled it because it was too full of tannins. By redistilling it, we take out the color, we leave the tannins behind, and we create something that we call an essence. So with an extractor and with an iStill together, you can both make extracts, colorful, very flavorful, normally around 30 percent.

But you can also redistill that extract into a clear essence, usually diluted, saved, used at around 60 percent. That means that even if you find that a certain product doesn't come over very well as an extract, it can still come over very well as an essence, and all of a sudden it's the essence that captures the essence of the fruit, the herb, whatever you're trying to get over.

Common mistakes and decisions

We use it, we think around 40-45 percent of our customers use it, or at least that's the people that have extractors ordered with them. A few more things you should realize if you look at the extractor is that some of the herbs and some of the flavors are extracted in water. Some esters, some flavor molecules, are water soluble, and some are alcohol soluble.

So cinnamon, for instance, has, I think it's called cannellium, as a flavor component, and cinnamon's flavor component is purely and solely alcohol solvent. So you use a very high alcohol base to get that flavor over. If you would do a water distillation, you wouldn't get the right oils out.

So there's two ways to play with the extractor. Create an extract that sits in the boiler of your still, because that's where it returns to after extracting. Maybe redistill that extract into an essence.

Again, you just use your still. You don't even need the extractor at that moment. You just fire up the boiler that's full with extract.

Then in the making of the extract, you can actually decide how much water I do versus how much ethanol. So do I work with a 30 percent, or 20 percent, or 10 percent, or maybe a 60 percent alcohol strength to start with? The higher proof you're alcohol in the boiler during the extraction process, the more of the ethanol-solving flavors I get over.

The lower my proof in the boiler, the more water-soluble. So there's basically two dimensions that you can play around with. Extracts versus essences, water solvency versus alcohol solvency.

Now the first one you get, you just have to try it. All the tools, the extractor included, are in your mini. So make an extract and make an essence by distilling it, putting the column back on and distilling it, and see what the differences are.

Maybe do something like peel, orange peel, in alcohol, in a bottle of vodka. See if you can capture the essence of that. See if you can capture the extract of that by using the extractor.

See if it works with high-proof alcohol or low-proof alcohol, and if there's a difference. And especially on the alcohol and water ratio, so what proof should your boiler charge be at? We have a lot of experience, and especially William can help you out very well, because for many ingredients we have listings that actually state, is water soluble or is it alcohol soluble?

We can share that information with you to sort of help you breach the gap and get to market with a product as quickly as possible. Now the extractor is really, really versatile. So we put whiskey in the boiler and we put wood chips in the extractor, and within six hours we've got a dark brown aged product.

We stop that because making 100 liters of coffee is not really what we drink here in a day, and it gets cold, so you need to heat it up again. We made beer with it, where we put the malted barley in the extractor and did the hops cooking in the boiler.

Continue with Connects extraction workflow to botanical design decisions. to build directly on this foundation.

Key Takeaways