Optimális minőségű kajszibarack-párlat előállítása

Abstract

When producing fruit spirits, it is mainly the proper selection of cut points employed during the distillation that ensures that there will be no objectionable heads and tails components indicating organoleptic laws, and the aromatic characteristic of the fruit will be present strongly both in terms of odor and taste. For most fruits, pleasant components providing fruity characteristics are distilled near the begin-cut during the distillation of the mash; therefore, separation of the heads and hearts is crucial to develop a pronounced aroma. As we progress towards the end-cut in the hearts phase, typically the concentration of the dominant aroma components decreases in the fractions, and proper selection of the end-cut basically prevents quality-lowering, unpleasant smelling, sour tails components from entering the hearts. In the case of apricot spirits, however, practical observations have shown that very pleasant jam-like components also appear near the end-cut. Thus in the case of apricot distillation, proper selection of the end-cut can imply transferring apricot aromas to the spirit as well as excluding tails components. In an experiment performed at WESSLING Nonproit Ltd., fractions were taken from the distillate during the distillation of an apricot mash. It was shown by GC-MS that gamma-Decalactone and gamma-Dodecalactone, which are considered the main aromas of apricot, are signiicantly enriched in the distillate towards the end of the distillation, near the end-cut. In the case of apricot, therefore, it is extremely important to determine the optimal time for the end-cut, because if the end-cut is made to soon, then most of the fruit's characteristic aromas will not make it to the hearts, the inal product. If there is a larger amount of mash and distillation is performed in several stages to retrieve valuable aroma components from the tails, it is useful to redistill the collected tails, because by adding the resulting hearts to previously obtained hearts fractions, an apricot spirit can be produced with very pronounced character that is free of separation laws.