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What the F*ck is Arak?
Anyone ever hear anything about arak? I want to start making it but can’t find any info anywhere. I’ve searched the forum and can’t find anything.
Please, for the love of god, someone post something about arak.
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12 Replies
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Could be you didn’t use the right search criteria. Did you try Arrack, Aragh? You know, kinda like whiskey vs whisky.
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If a bottle of Arak falls off the shelf, does anyone care?
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Perhaps distillers have arak-naphobia!
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We can supply grape neutral spirits for Arak making 9177546052 drop me a text
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We all know the answer but More importantly does it make a sound?
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Crack? Er… Cr-arak?
(groan, not my best work)
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We have attempted a Batavia style Arrack.
1. accomplish a red rice mold fermentation or red rice Koji as it is called.
2. do a 100% cane juice must (we did a 100% molasses must as we are not in the tropics).
3. pitch the red rice KOJI after a day of normal fermentation (essentially putting the yeast in competition with the bacteria making them create very interesting ethanol compounds).
We also attempted a Baijiu using a white rice koji and a corn and sorghum mash!
By far the most difficult part of this project is getting the koji done correctly and efficiently. We used bread proofing cabinet with some added humidy and temp controls to accomplish this.
There is one company in America that can supply the spores to make Koji. If you are interested in this I can get you to the right place. Also note that the spores have been specifically bred to make koji. Attempting to gather wild spores is dangerous and unpredictable.
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Assumed the OP was talking about anise-flavored Arak (aka Ouzo, Raki, etc).
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We custom produce an arak (anise flavored grape distillate) for someone; it’s pretty simple but it really helps to have a bain marie still as to get the expected loucheing using only aniseed (and no star anise) the botanical loading is very high and if the aniseeds get cooked/toasted the flavor is noticeable and bad.
The culture used to produce baijiu is much more diverse than a single-strain koji, and the distillation schemes are significantly complicated. I worked on developing one but after visiting baijiu producer in China pretty much gave up, strong aroma & sauce aroma baijiu have the most complex production process of any distilled spirit and it’s not something that would be easy to credibly replicate.
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Totally agree. We could never get enough koji prepared to do a full sized mash experiment. Fun to learn about the history and such and the similarities between Chinese Baijiiu and Batavian Arrack
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In principle, arak (drink of Asian nomads) is made very simply.- Take koumiss (horse milk).-Let it stand warm for a few days, so that it ferments.- Distill in the usual way. I prefer on a column, but the ancient nomads were hardly so perverted on their bamboo moonshine “apparatuses”.
From 20 liters of horse milk – it turns out about a liter of drink, as it was a thousand years ago.
Arak can be made from any milk.Even from palm. Even with the addition of dates or sugar to milk.
If you take ordinary milk instead of water, and do the rest as usual, you still get arak.
Then it’s just a matter of taste.The resulting rectified product is diluted to ~ 40 ° and the following ingredients are added to taste:Anise. (he will allow you to drink strong warm alcohol in the heat)Ginger.Turmeric.Cinnamon.Raisin.Mango.Blueberry.A pineapple.
Ceylon Arak is aged in teak or Ceylon Halmilla barrels for up to 15 years.
But in ancient times, it was just a way to thump when there was only the steppe, horses and grass around, but there was no sugar, no fruit, no water.
Greeks call their adapted product OUZO and the Turks call it RAKI.
https://aegeanflavours.blogspot.com/2014/05/ouzo-greeces-famous-drink.html
https://madeinturkeytours.com/turkish-raki/
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oh my goodness, my op was made 2 years ago in response to some numbnuts posting the same stupid arak post in many forum topics.
I DO NOT NOW NOR HAVE I EVER HAD ANY INTEREST IN ARAK.
If I didn’t before, I definitely have araknaphobia now.
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