Making Apple Spirits Taste Better
upstart writes:
Making apple spirits taste better:
For hundreds of years, apples have been a good base for liquors, such as Calvados in France and applejack in the U.S., because they're full of sugar and desirable flavors. As the mashed fruit ferments, alcohol evolves along with additional flavor compounds, which add to the complex taste of the final liquor. Distilling the fermented apples with heat concentrates the alcohol and removes unpleasant fermentation byproducts, such as carboxylic acids that can impart unclean, rancid, cheesy and sweaty flavors. Most producers use batch columns to make apple spirits because it provides a clean-tasting, high-alcohol distillate in a large volume. But the exact time to stop the distillation process -- and achieve the most flavorful liquor -- has been uncertain. Previously, Andreas Liebminger and colleagues showed that a rapid increase in apricot brandy distillate's conductivity reliably indicates the ideal time to stop the distillation. So, the researchers wanted to see if this would also hold for apple liquors.
[...] The researchers say that monitoring the conductivity in the distillates afforded them a simple way to identify the best conditions for producing apple spirits with the most desirable quality and taste.
Journal Reference:
Andreas Liebminger, Christian Philipp, Sezer Sari, et al. Monitoring of Carboxylic Acids by In-Line Conductivity Measurement to Determine Optimum Distillation Strategy for Distilling Apple Spirits, ACS Food Science & Technology (DOI: 10.1021/acsfoodscitech.1c00327)
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