I Figure Someone's Tried This

I visited Denmark recently. While I was there, I found a really nice salty licorice liquor called Ga-Jol Yellow. This got me to thinking about the possibility of brewing a licorice-flavored wine.

I know that some brewers use licorice-root in beer, but I'm wondering if it's possible to make a palatable wine by simply boiling a bunch of licorice root and adding a couple pounds of sugar? Would the natural sweetness be overpowering? Or is there something in licorice - excessive oils, etc - that impedes the process?

Yup, I did! I've played around with liquorice a few times, both as an ingredient and on it's own as you propose. The experiment was actually quite good but unexpected - the flavour of the liquorice changes quite dramatically, and my finished beverage tasted eerily like the old-timey "Victory V" lozenges, which I think were a mixture of liquorice, linseed and horehound (the originals had ether and chloroform, but war's like that). I really liked it because I like everything to do with liquorice, the only problem was that I couldn't get the FG to bottom out dry like I wanted, even with energizer and nutrient, so the sugars plus liquorice made it too sweet to drink more than a snifter at a time. But I'm totally still in the game, it's my holy grail and I'm not giving up.

I can't find my notes right now, but I do remember only using a very small amount of liquorice powder (1/8 or 1/4 tsp in a gallon), and the flavour was prominent. I probably shot for an OG of around 1.070. If you do anything, I'd love to hear all about it!

You could try making a tincture of licorice and vodka and adding to taste in a mild wine base, like Welch's white. That way you can know that the wine is dry, you don't overpower the flavor, and you don't loose any aeromatics out the airlock. It's the easiest and most effective way of dialing in exactly what flavor you want.

theDREWery said:

You could try making a tincture of licorice and vodka and adding to taste in a mild wine base, like Welch's white. That way you can know that the wine is dry, you don't overpower the flavor, and you don't loose any aeromatics out the airlock. It's the easiest and most effective way of dialing in exactly what flavor you want.

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Just curious. How much extract or tincture might you think would be a good starting place to add (I am assuming that bench testing is in order but the equivalent ... say about 2 fl oz to a gallon (50 cc) ?

I'm pretty excited this topic is getting attention - thanks for starting it, @brcfarmer! Some observations:

- liquorice tastes different depending how it's processed. This might be obvious, but if you've ever chewed on a liquorice root or drank it as tea, you'll know it's quite different from the familiar candy flavour (and I'm not talking about anise, which is often used as a flavour substitute). I'm a frequent consumer of pure liquorice "pellets" that are basically nothing but solid chunks of reduced pure "liquorice block juice" that has been boiled or otherwise heat processed - these have that smoky, thick "black liquorice" flavour that you also get in real liquorice candies. The root itself lacks these characteristics and is much more prominently sweet and floral.

- I probably wouldn't want to use a vodka tincture in my creations because I'm a weird purist, and a minimalist, and I dislike the idea of having to rely on industrial alcohol to create my own homebrew. That said, it will certainly work, though if I understand tinctures correctly I'd expect it to be more similar to sweet, floral liquorice root, rather than dark smoky liquorice candy, per my above bullet. I may be wrong.

- I've only made Welch's white wine once, I liked it well enough, but it was certainly not what I'd consider a "mild base", in fact it was very strong tasting and not due to alcohol content. If I were going this route I'd probably consider making an apfelwein first and then using that, as I actually find mine to be fairly mild. YMMV.

- HEALTH WARNING: sorry to be dramatic, but this could be important if making tinctures or otherwise concentrating natural liquorice. It's a medicinal plant (#2 in the Chinese traditiional system, after ginseng), and it has real effects on the human body. Some are positive - it mimics estrogen making it useful for pms, it soothes ulcers and calms coughs and diminishes thirst, etc. It also raises blood pressure, and people have been hospitalized for overindulging, even just eating too much candy.

That said, I love the stuff, and now I'm thinking my next experimental batch will be a liquorice one, & I'll make a point of taking scrupulous notes. I'm still sitting on powdered root so it'll be based on that, if anyone makes a tincture or goes another route, we could compare notes!

Addendum: there is such a thing as "brewer's liquorice", basically pure liquorice block juice hardened into blocks or tubes and used by beer brewers for things like stouts and porters (I've never actually made beer, I just read about it). I can't find any, even my local brewing store had never heard of the stuff, but maybe some of you will have better luck. If you can find some, you could use this either directly dissolved or to make your tincture, and it would probably give a much more traditional "black liquorice" flavour.

Just to reiterate what buMbLeB stated in regards to actual licorice root. I tried my hand at a "root beer" back before I gave up on it and went to mead/cider. The licorice root was used in place of sugar. It is more sweet, and nothing like what we think of when someone mentions black licorice. I would try to make the brewer's licorice or a good quality candy black licorice into an extract. Recently I made my own vanilla extract by using beans and everclear. Vodka would probably work just as well.

If you ever look at old wine recipes for something like dandelion wine, you'll notice that there's a base wine there that is water, sugar, lemons for acid, and raisins for tannins. ... With whatever else steeped and added as flavoring.

So you could do the root thing or just add licorice extract.

brcfarmer said:

I know that some brewers use licorice-root in beer, but I'm wondering if it's possible to make a palatable wine by simply boiling a bunch of licorice root and adding a couple pounds of sugar?

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I haven't tried using licorice root, but I have made wine using large amounts of sugar and for me its not "palatable" at all. A wine with too much sugar has a "hot", rocket fuel character that I find undrinkable.
Everyone's tastes are different, and it may be ok for you, but if large amounts of people liked wine made with sugar, you would see it as a commercial product.
If I do try using licorice root, I'd try it in a golden strong ale, about 10% ABV and add 1/2-1 ounce at the end of the boil. I'd figuring on aging the beer for about a year.

madscientist451 said:

Everyone's tastes are different, and it may be ok for you, but if large amounts of people liked wine made with sugar, you would see it as a commercial product.

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What's the word?

This is quite an interesting idea.

The tricky part of all this is getting the proportions right between the sugar and licorice. I know from making root beer, depending on the amounts of ingredients you add you can get hugely different tastes.

I think I would mix some vanilla beans with the licorice to get more flavour and maybe more of a balance going on.

This will definitely be my next project. I've got two primaries filled with banana wine that are only three days into the ferm...but after I've transferred and racked a few times, I'm tackling the licorice.

I like both "natural" licorice and anise. I think I may use brewer's licorice as mentioned in this thread. Considering how long it takes for banana wine to be bottle ready, I've definitely got time to get my hands on some, or make a decent extract. Ideally, I want the licorice to be present throughout the fermentation to see how it will affect taste at different points. I also like vistabrewer's vanilla bean suggestion. Balance is good.

I'm somewhat pleased to announce that the grand experiment is underway. Last night I boiled just under 1 gallon H2O with 1 tsp liquorice root powder for 10min, dissolved 4 cups table sugar and 5ml each of yeast nutrient and energizer. Cooled and dry pitched just over half a sachet of ec-1118. I finished up sometime around 7pm yesterday PST, and it's currently sitting in a carboy under a towel with slow to moderate activity. I forgot to take a reading, but I expect the OG to be around 1.080-90, I'll check and verify with my next batch.

One C of sugar weighs about 7 oz and so 4 C= 28 oz or 1.75 lbs . One pound and three quarters of sugar will raise the gravity of 1 gallon by 70 points.. so your likely SG = 1.070 (and so a potential ABV of about 9%. Always more efficient to measure by weight rather than volume.

I appreciate you doing the math - I wasn't terribly far off - but why is it more efficient to weigh than measure? Didn't you just use measurements to figure it out? Does a cup of sugar weigh different amounts sometimes?

So back with a quick update (actually too quick, I'm off by a day and a week's time isn't until tomorrow. Anyway...). Fermentation so far has been extremely active, with lees exploding off the bottom like solar flares, and in retrospect I think I really overdid the nutrient/ energizer, but this doesn't seem to have hurt it so far as I can tell, and it started calming down a little as of yesterday, but still chugging away. I thiefed a sample that comes in at ~1.042, a bit higher than I would have guessed given the activity.

Though it's obviously too soon I couldn't resist tasting my sample, and I'll do my best to describe that here, though it's super hard to do it justice. First off, it's wayyyy too sweet, due both to remaining sugar and the natural liquorice sweetness. Second, it tastes almost nothing like black liquorice candies - neither the good Dutch ones nor the crappy N.American versions. In fact it has a distinct taste of cherry - somewhere between maraschino cherries (the crappy coloured version, not the natural delights I've never encountered) and what the smell of sweet almonds would taste like if it were a fruit, and not full of cyanide. Because I'm familiar with liquorice root I can detect the flavour mostly as an aftertaste, but I'm not sure it's something most people could guess. There's also a note reminiscent of Victory V lozenges, but that's probably not a good point of reference for most people.

That's it for now, I swapped out the cloth cover for an airlock and will report back next Sunday or when the bubbling stops, whichever comes first.

Yeah volumes weigh different amounts - the finer the granular sugar the more sugar will be in a cup. Then, what counts as a "cup" - full to the top? To near the top? Is every "cup" exactly the same volume? What is the actual volume of a cup? Who controls this volume? Cups are great in baking but not very useful in any other activity. Liters and grams or even pounds and gallons... but cups? hmmm.

I'm curious to hear how the taste profile changes when the sugar content decreases. As I mentioned to you before, I'm going the route of licorice root + black tea and fermenting to dryness.

Since I'd only made wines from fruit, I fermented a gallon batch of Luzianne black tea with lemon in primary JUST to get a rough and dirty idea of how it might taste. You know, in prep for my experiment. Plus it gave me an excuse to drink something right away without going through the usual time-consuming labors.

I used a little extra nutrient to get things going. Used 1/4 the amount of tannin powder I normally use, because...well, it's black tea. Although it took a little longer than fruit wines to get to the bubbly stage of the ferment, when it did, it was like Vesuvius in The Last Days of Pompeii. Smelled great. By the time it hit the point I'd normally rack off into secondary, there was a manageable bitterness and a enough dry-tongue to let me know I shouldn't have added ANY tannin. Now I know.

It has the possibility of blending well, but I'm actually still at my starting point. Could taste good boiling licorice root with black tea. Could be a disaster. Now the only thing left is to actually DO IT. Will update you guys with progress.

@bernardsmith - I take your points, though if I'm always using the same type of sugar (I am) then it should be pretty consistent. Your other points might also apply to other measures (how close is close enough? what if you're a gram over/under?). Anyway, I don't actually have an accurate food scale, so it's cups for the time being.

@brcfarmer - I like fermented tea, and as I may have mentioned, to me it tastes a lot like a Long Island or its variations. Question - how much tea did you brew to ferment your gallon? I've found myself using fewer teabags than others often recommend. Looking forward to your next report, I think we both know what's at stake here.

buMbLeB said:

@bernardsmith - I take your points, though if I'm always using the same type of sugar (I am) then it should be pretty consistent. Your other points might also apply to other measures (how close is close enough? what if you're a gram over/under?). Anyway, I don't actually have an accurate food scale, so it's cups for the time being.

@brcfarmer - I like fermented tea, and as I may have mentioned, to me it tastes a lot like a Long Island or its variations. Question - how much tea did you brew to ferment your gallon? I've found myself using fewer teabags than others often recommend. Looking forward to your next report, I think we both know what's at stake here.

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I used the Luzianne Family-Size teabags. Four is good for a gallon; they're way bigger and well-packed than the regular single-serving ones. It's a black/orange pekoe blend. Popular down South. Boiled a few minutes, took the bags out and dissolved two and a half pounds of sugar. Then I resteeped the bags for a long, long time.

Because I was worried about the yeast being able to get a good start on something non-fruity, I made a quick syrup and added it. Didn't measure the extra before inverting it. Wasn't a lot. Just something more simple than regular table sugar to give the yeast an appetizer. I think that and the added nutrient gave it a nice start.

I can't wait to do this with the licorice root. I'm just nervous about getting the amount licorice root JUST RIGHT. I love licorice - my wife's from Scandinavia and we eat salty lakrids like it's going out of style - but I don't want to cross that fine line between full and ick.

OK, so I'm back a few days before my scheduled update, but I have some trememdous news - I may have uncovered the secret of making liquorice "black". I was rewatching a youtube video I'd previously saved, wherein "erk soos" is made, this being a traditional Muslim Ramadan drink that more or less translates as "liquorice juice". Syria is a huge producer of liquorice, so these people probably know what they're doing. Unfortunately, I don't speak Syrian, and the several related youtube videos are all Greek to me, but just watching I noticed how very BLACK the juice is, and how quickly and easily it osmoses into the surrounding water.

Then I realized that I had heard one word that sounded English-y, right at the point in the video where the "sugar" is added - I wondered why you'd add sugar to liquorice that is already so sweet. At first I thought the word was "sodium", but when I heard it again in another video (both linked at bottom) I decided it might be "soda", and that hunch led me to a google hunt that yielded the following tidbit:


I understand what baking soda is, and how it leavens baking in combination with an acid, but I don't really know why it would make such a difference to steeping liquorice - but those videos speak for themselves. I've tried to duplicate this myself with 1 tsp liquorice powder to 1/8 tsp baking soda, and while the resulting mix seems a bit darker than otherwise, it's nowhere near black.

So I'm putting this all here in the hopes that someone smarter than me can make sense of this clue. Any thoughts?

EDIT - links below:

Time for my scheduled update: my liquorice wine has now dropped to about 1.005 and is almost completely clear, a bit straw-coloured in the jug but clear in the glass. It's still bubbling away slowly, fwiw. It looks nothing like the erk soos in the videos above.

So how does it taste? Almost nothing like liquorice - the sweetness has dissipated, and in fact it now tastes "drier" to me than the apple cider that I usually stop between 1.006-003, which is strange given the innate sweetness of liquorice root. It also tastes less overtly of cherry, but there is still a pronounced "fruityness" that is hard to describe, but perhaps it's close to how I'd imagine a lychee wine to taste, with a touch of almost grapefruit sour. As before, the fruityness dominates up front with the liquorice essence becoming more detectable on the back end, almost as an aftertaste, and even then it's nothing like the "liquorice" taste one perceives in ouzo or sambuca (which are in fact anise). It's also fairly alcoholic! The "earthyness" of liquorice root has completely disappeared, and overall the flavour is quite robust and even intense, which is suprising given how little I used to begin with.

Finally, it's delicious! I wish I could do a better job describing the flavour, but it's really unique and very enjoyable, and I'm fighting the temptation to go pilfer some more just for the hell of it. Definitely going to let some of it go dry and then bottle to see what happens with time.

Hi friends! I hope I'm not annoying people with my updates, but a quest cannot be unquosen. So my original experiment has pretty much ended, I've set aside a small-size wine bottle with an individual airlock that shows no evidence of bubbling, but which I will ignore for a month and then cork to see what's what in 6 mo to a year. I still have some in a plastic bottle, and I notice that it continues to mellow , with the "fruityness" receding. I'm also surprised by how "boozy" it seems - not "hot", but strong - I'd guess it at ~14% by taste, far higher than my sugar additions would allow. Interestingly my gf liked it, and she is a proud lightweight.

BUT... the real reason I'm here is regarding my penultimate post pondering "erk soos" and the blackness of liquorice (remember, the stuff I made is nice, but tastes almost nothing like liquorice). So I gave it another go, and added 10 tsp liquorice powder and 1 tsp baking soda to a splash of water, stirred it until it darkened and had the consistency of bread dough, and then added cold water to the top of a 2 cup mason jar, covered and refrigerated. I stirred it good again the next day and put it back. Last night I boiled just shy of a gallon (4L) of water and added 4 cups sugar (sorry @bernardsmith), then added in my liquorice decoction minus the root powder solids that had nicely separated to the bottom of the jar. That sat to cool overnight and I've now pitched with a half pack ec-1118 and 1 tsp each nutrient and energizer.

This time, when I tasted the residue of my sugar mash, it was astonishingly similar to a certain brand of Italian liquorice toffee I remember fondly from my youth, and is so darkly brown as to be mistaken for black. Curiously, diluting my concentrate into the gallon pan of boiling water didn't seem to lighten it up noticeably. So for all of you no doubt several dedicated lurkers, I may be on to something. Stay tuned for the taste test.

I'm throwing my hat into this ring as well. I've heard buMbleB has had some real success with his licorice fermentation, and I'd like to try a variation.

Having researched a few recipes for erk soos, I've decided to steep some licorice root and sodium bicarbonate for a few days, and then strain my mixture into a black tea that has already been prepared with the desired gravity.

I ended up purchasing the last 2.5 ounces of shredded root at my local co-op. The amount is about half of the recommended root for the erk soos recipe I'm using, but I'm going to roll with it. Had a slightly smokey, sweet smell that's not quite what I expected. Added 1/3 tsp sodium bicarbonate, then added just over 2 cups of water. And stirred...a lot. There's a thin layer of white "sudsiness" on top, which I hope means some decent extraction is taking place.

Will add periodic updates at each stage.

It's actually your ring, OP, I just got excited. But yes, fellow travellers, success has been had. tldr; OG-SG approx 1.070 to 0.994 in 9 days, cold crash overnight. Result: liquorice wine! The cold crash mellowed the initial "twang" considerably and dropped the yeast, pronounced liquorice flavour but comes on heavier towards the back of the tongue, almost as an aftertaste. Think of this as in contrast to an anise liqueur (sambuca, ouzo) where the flavour is up front, like a black jellybean. This is closest to an alcoholic liquid version of an old-fashioned liquorice pipe/cigar, the ones that are jet black on the outside but molasses brown inside, with candy nonpareil "embers".

@brcfarmer - that "sudsiness" is indeed a good sign, liquorice is sometimes used as a foaming agent in beers, and my ferment had an impressive head for days, until I think the abv got high enough to dissipate it. As for the smell, that's exactly right, and my "wine" has only the faintest "nose" of spicy/ smoky/ earthiness, in contrast to a pronounced flavour.

As with my earlier experiment I've set aside a small wine bottle under airlock that I'll eventually cork (I don't use sulf/sorb*tes so I have to wait it out) and then sample not sooner than half a year to a year from now, to see how aging affects it. I'm already drinking the remainder, and I'll definitely be making more soon. Also, Seville oranges are just in season now (the ones that make legit marmalade), and I think my next experiment will be some manner of liquorice orange concoction.

Shortly after my last entry, I took the advice of a fellow forum member and blended my root to a slightly finer consistency, then added more water.

After two days my combo of licorice root, sodium bicarbonate and water yielded 3/4th of a liter of dark brown extract (post straining). How did it taste? "Woodsy" and sweet in a way that reminded me of Splenda or some other artificial sweetener. I've done a lot of different varieties of licorice, from the really salty, chemical soaked Dutch and Finnish concoctions to the more palate-friendly anise-derived American stuff. Taste-wise, I don't think it really fit in either category...but that's a good thing. I've heard people describe it as 'earthy', and I'd say that's a pretty fair assessment. Like wood and soil translated to some kind of primeval candy.

I made black tea (8 regular-sized tea bags), and added the licorice root I'd removed from the extract to the boil in a nylon straining bag. Afterwards, I added my extract to the mixture, watered it to a little over a gallon, and stirred it for a couple of minutes. A two-pound bag of brown sugar brought the mixture up to 1.083 SG. Added enough regular table sugar to bring me to an even 1.090. My gravity may have been compromised by some root still floating in the mixture, but I'm not gonna sweat it.

As far as tannins, acids, etc...I added what most people would use for a red wine, with the exception being that I doubled up on the yeast nutrient. No pectic enzyme. I doubt that licorice root could produce pectin. Even if the wine wasn't really translucent, I wouldn't count it as a deficiency in something that, in theory, should be dark. Pitched the yeast a few minutes ago.

For those of you who are curious about what this erk soos extract might look like color-wise, pic below. I sure hope it blends well with the black tea.

Update: First visible signs of fermentation. Normal smell of fermentation is there, but WAY earthier than any of the fruit-based country wines I've made in the past. Olfactory-wise, all licorice, no tea. I have a feeling this one is going to be pretty different from the others. Color at beginning of fermentation looks nearly black in primary bucket. I expect it to turn a few shades lighter as it progresses. Will make next update on transfer to secondary.

Update 2: Premature, but I'm a little more excited about this project than my usual country wines. Second day of visual fermentation has yielded surprising "early" taste results (yes, I taste the spatula after each daily stir). Earthy smell has subsided a bit. Approximate taste: something like a blend of sweetened dark roast coffee with very subtle (and pleasing) bitter chocolate undertones...an interesting competition between the licorice and tea.

The bubbling on top looks like the foam on a well-poured stout. I'm a sucker for watching ferms in primary. Mentally, it's like looking at a tank full of tropical fish and ornate coral. Tranquil and captivating.

Can't wait to taste when sugars are more depleted. No discernible fruit tastes yet. I know this is subject to change. Licorice and black tea are blending decently early on, which is a HUGE relief. Still has the potential to go downhill, but my fingers are crossed. Would prefer the licorice to dominate, but not in an obnoxious way.

Here's the scoop:

After sitting in secondary for a spell, my licorice/black tea blend tastes...well, woodsy and strong as an ox. It's dark brown and pretty much devoid of any hints of fruit. Next experiment will be either licorice + dark fruit or licorice + cherry.

It's been about a month since I've offered any updates, but I've had an exciting development.

First, the bad news: The licorice-dark tea ended up being a rather mediocre blend whose primary tastes were in major conflict. Had a promising start, but I wasn't exactly pleased with the development over time. I'm always optimistic at the start of a project, but when it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Gotta assess things with the eye of a quality control specialist.

Luckily, I'd also started on a dark cherry / licorice extract (erk soos) blend. So far, it's shaping up to be one of the BEST "red" non-grape wines I've ever made. Why? Well, after a spell in the carboy, and some topping off with dark-cherry juice after racking, the taste of licorice and dark cherry are starting to OVERLAP instead of fighting each other.

It took a few weeks for this shift to happen. I know this because I regularly filch taste samples from my carboy as long as the airlock has some "lift" to it: I figure the fermentation won't allow a ton of oxygen to run wild on my wine. A few days ago, I took a small sample and noticed it had a "weird" smell: my first thought was "OH NO...SPOILAGE!". I wasn't sure, so I left it alone Yesterday, I got another small sample, and the smell and taste were absolutely superlative. It was like a near perfect marriage of licorice and dark cherry...like some rare European elixir only sold at specialty shops. I've made good wines and bad wines, but this might be one of the first remarkable wines I've done.

"Elixir" - I like that word!

Congrats on your discovery, sounds amazing. I'll keep my eyes open for dark cherry juice.

I wanted to make an update here to state that, upon bottling, my Licorice Extract, Dark Cherry Blend has yielded probably the best homemade wine I've ever completed.

The licorice extract (basically licorice root, water and a TINY pinch of baking soda immersed in water for a few days) and dark cherry were fermented together, along with some plum and blackberry for depth.

The result fits very neatly within a Pinot Noir, Zinfandel niche. My wife said it was like a top notch Burgundy, which I think is a Pinot Noir grape. It's dark, powerful, and complex. Here's a couple of pics of my wine in the glass. Nice deep color, and this stuff has MAJOR body.

What makes this wine really unique is that the licorice is very present, but you can't really put your finger on it. I had some friends taste the bit that was left after bottling, and they were extremely impressed.

The trick with using this extract in wine, is to let the fruit dominate by one or two notches. You can use a ton of extract, but make it ever-so-slightly fruit forward.

If I had more than a gallon, I'd probably try this stuff in a competition after a year or so in the bottle.

Definitely trying this.