G'day guys over the last month or so I've been busy making neutral and experimenting with my Absinthe recipe as well as the ouzo recipe that 5Star posted.
I totally screwed a neutral run by being impatient with my little vm and trying to take off too quickly with too much heat and smeared all parts together requiring me to re do the whole lot with a significant loss in time and product.
OUZO
I experimented with the ouzo recipe in two ways;
I cancelled the star anise out and used green anise instead, I also used sweet fennel crowns of good quality. This experiment didnt really work, well did and didn't. What I ended up with was a milder anise flavoured ouzo with a nice fennel kick but to my tastes the anise was just too mild for a proper ouzo. I like my ouzo in shots to be sipped and don't mix it with coke (I don't mix anything with coke except fish and chips). If I were to mix this with coke I think it would be a really nice faux ouzo mixer.
I then did the recipe again with the star anise and fennel crowns, I macerated the fennel for 24 hours in a small amount of 80% neutral and then added to the main mix just before distilling. I think punkins addition of a white wine was also a good idea so added some dry white as well. I ground the other ingredients fairly finely and then distilled. This turned out to be a very nice slick mouthfeel ouzo with a nice anise/fennel punch with the cardamom,nutmeg,pepper(corns) and cinnamon hanging in the background. A really nice drink for an after dinner sipper.
Absinthe
Here is the quality ingredients part. I was sent some home grown herbs from a friend and thought I would try them out in a batch. Unfortunately due to time stored and being stored in plastic zip lock bags the herbs had lost their original qualities and what I ended up with, using the same weights and measurements that I used with my other herbs, was a litre and a half of weak tasting and weak louching borderline down the sink crap. I'm going to keep it just for cocktail mix but to drink it as plain absinthe alone would not be great. In that macerate I also experimented with sweet fennel seed instead of crowns which added to the failure of the entire batch.
So a learning experience had,
Use fresh quality ingredients for full flavour, be patient with the still and fennels aint fennels.
Cheers