Produzione di amari ed elisir con impiego del Naviglio Estrattore in alternativa alla macerazione

"Production of bitters and elixirs with the Naviglio Extractor as an alternative to maceration"

The bitters and elixirs are currently produced by following slavishly traditional recipes, which origins are lost in the mists of time and that in most cases are secret and have something magic referring to the extraction process and/or its preparation. The use of ethanol as extraction solvent of the main active principles of the various parts of vegetables such as roots, bark, flowers, etc. .., guarantees microbiological stability of the extract also for long prolonged extractions, while the characteristics of polarity and at the same time of organic nature of the molecule allows the extraction of a wide range of organic compounds, ranging from the alcohols to organic acids, from flavonoids to terpenes, etc.. The extraction process of maceration is ruled by chance, based on the diffusion of compounds from inside the solid matrix to the outside, where there is the extracting liquid, and from the unpredictable transformation that can be generated in the micro surface and in the natural cavities of the plants matrix. In literature there are no works of scientific importance dealing with the production process of the bitters and the elixirs; this is certainly due to the complexity of the solid matrix that has to be extracted, to the long extraction time and to the fact that the extraction process of maceration is uncontrolled. In this study it is used the Extractor Naviglio for this new application for the production of the bitters and elixirs. This technology is applied to the production of alcoholic mixtures of herbs used for the production of alcohol extract of herbs mixtures used for the production of bitters and elixirs as an alternative to the traditional process of maceration. Three different mixtures of various parts of plants for the production of bitters have been extracted in parallel by macerating and through use of the Extractor Naviglio. The main parameter considered in this experimentation has been the dry residue after evaporation, because it is directly related to the amount of active extracts. In principle, one can say that the higher is the value of the residual evaporation and the higher is the concentration of active ingredients in the extract. The organoleptic taste of the bitters coming from the different extracts has been used to identify the right timing of the extraction process .