In our last article, we discussed how Arab Muslim academic Jabir Ibn Hayyan invented the alembic pot still and accidentally created the first distilled spirit.
Interestingly, the fusion of aniseed and with a spirit to create Arak was just as accidental.
As word of Hayyan’s alembic pot still spread throughout the Middle East, artisans began forging their own out of copper and selling them to home distillers. People used the technology to turn surplus wine into spirits before it could oxidize and waste. They also used it to produce rosewater, orange-blossom water and other essential oils that go into sweets, perfumes and medicines.
Today, distillers use separate stills for spirits and essential oils, as the latter creates residue that can infuse unwanted aromas and flavors into spirits. But at the time, alembic pot stills were expensive, so people used the same one for multiple concoctions.
As this was happening, aniseed was growing in popularity throughout the Middle East as a miracle drug. People boiled it in water and consumed it as tea to cure abdominal pain, colic, indigestion, menstrual cramping, coughs and headaches. Some even ground aniseed into powder to mix with flower for flavorful baked goods.
Due to its popularity, aniseed was one of the first plants to be distilled into an essential oil, anethole. In fact, the market for anethole was so strong that nearly every distiller in the Levant and Mesopatamia took part in its production.
It is these distillers who historians believe inadvertently fused the residue of aniseed with spirits to create the first anise-flavored alcohol.
Drinkers preferred the sweet flavor of the anise-flavored drink over the neutral tasting eau de vie that was produced until then and called “Al-Kohl.” As a result, distillers began to distill wine with aniseed on purpose to add a stronger does of anethole that would aid with indigestion, a common ailment associated with summer barbecues.
The conscious fusion required a slower distillation process, which caused the spirit to exit the still’s condenser drop-by-drop. These drops resembled the distillers’ sweat, as they hunkered down next to their hot stills. Thus, the new spirit was called “arak”, Arabic for perspiration.
Later, when someone discovered that diluting arak with water turned it white, the spirit was nicknamed “Halib al-Assad” or “Lion’s Milk”.