Elements of Flavour Workshop

I can’t believe it is nearly 4 years since I attended my first Distillation Workshop with Jill Mulvaney at Alembics. Last month I attended another workshop, this time at her new lab facility on Waiheke Island. Entitled “Elements of Flavour”, the workshop allowed us to get hands-on experience experimenting with a full range of aromatic extracts to build flavour in both water-based and alcohol based formulations.

I was pretty excited to learn more about how to use some of the extracts I had made but didn’t really know how to use – especially hydrosols (water distillation of plants) – as well how to make non-alcoholic beverages that taste really good.

We started our day in the covered outdoor space where we prepared the plant material to make a hydrosol. Jill had collected several aromatic plants from her garden for us to use: bay leaves, lemongrass, lemon verbena, angelic root and some cucumber. We stripped the leaves and put everything in the still, then Jill set the still up to ‘do its thing’ while we explored more flavours.

It was only a small group of – three of us plus Jill – but we had pretty good global coverage: Mia was a clinical herbalist from the US and Laurence was from Luxembourg and living half the year on Waiheke. I was the only one who had experience with distilling but we all brought very different perspectives to understanding flavours. This led to great discussions and comparisons as we tried our hands at flavour combinations.

We started with exploring hydrosols. Jill had made a lactoferment of ginger, chamomile and elderflowers that we used on ice as a base combined with an infusion (tea) of lemon balm, lemon verbena, bay leaves and lemongrass, and some feijoa/lemon infused honey, all topped up with some soda water. Then came the fun part: adding a few drops of different hydrosols either individually or in combination to our shot glasses to see what effect the flavours had overall. We experimented with clove, fennel, chamomile, cardamom, rosemary, lemon myrtle, ginger, allspice and even lapsong souchong.

As an aside, I asked how to make a drink with butterfly pea flowers that maintained its blue colour but still tasted nice. Butterfly pea is a fun chameleon to introduce because it starts out blue but changes to pink/purple once acid is added to it. I had done this a few times with my Ink Gin (coloured with butterfly pea flower) but wanted to have something non-alcoholic that I could wow people with when they came around. Jill humoured me by making an infusion with ginger and lemon (in a very fancy teapot) that did have good colour and flavour – and turned a gorgeous pink when tonic water was added to it.

After our lunch break we moved inside (where there was air-conditioning). First up was to get our alcohol distillation underway. We started by ‘tasting’ some botanicals to decide what flavours would go well together – and decided that we would make a botanical spirit using fresh angelica root as the main ingredient (rather than using juniper to make gin).

We used a similar tasting technique as we had done for hydrosols but this time using alcohol distilled botanicals (quintessences). Using vodka as the base in our shot glasses we added drops of different quintessences until we had built up a flavour profile we were all happy with. The total number of drops should equal about 30 as this matches the number of grams you use to make a litre of spirit.

Our recipe ended up producing a very balanced botanical spirit (which we named Angel Wings), combining flavours of citrus, spice, leaves, roots, berries and floral:

12g Angelica root (double if using fresh)
4g Yuzu peel
2g Cubeb berries
4g Liquorice root
2g Pink peppercorns
2g Bitter orange peel
2g Chamomile flowers
1g Lemon peel

Once the distillation was underway, we looked at our hydrosol distillation from the morning and Jill showed us how we could use it as a cooling spritz or turn it into a gel that would ‘stick’ better to your skin by adding 10% hyaluronic acid.

Next up was more tasting, first with bitters. Bitters (alcohol extracts of bitter botanicals) are making a comeback both as a way to layer flavours into drinks and as a way to prime your digestion. Jill had a great selection of different bitters that we first tasted by way of a drop on the back of our hands and then ranked in order of bitterness to better understand the flavours. We were able to make a blend that we could take away with us. I decided to keep a similar palate (bitter orange, angelica, fennel flower, ginger and liquorice) so that I could use it with the ‘Angel Wings’.

Then came Herbal Honeys and Elixirs (botanical alcohol extracts combined with honey). Honey can be used as a solvent: combine 300g honey with 200g flavourings/spice and heat around 40C for about 4 hours (in a Thermomix or double boiler). Once you have strained off the flavoured honey, you can benefit from a 2-for-1 by then putting the marc (the remaining solids that will still be coated in honey) into a jar and covering them with vodka (or other 40% alcohol) for 2-4 weeks. Once strained you will have a 25-30% alcohol elixir. Both of these extracts can be used to layer flavours into drinks and bring different properties (texture, sweetness and colour). Jill’s sample bottles are a thing of beauty with an array of different colours – including a bright vibrant green that she created by adding some material left from distilling a cucumber hydrosol.

We each ended up with a lovely selection of bottles to take home with us: our botanical spirit,  our hydrosol (spritz and gel), a bitters concoction and an elixir.

After the workshop finished, I caught up with my friend Margot who lives on Waiheke for drinks and a snack before catching the ferry back to Auckland city. The evening light was quite spectacular so I couldn’t resist including a few photos.