Palm wine forms the raw basis for Ogogoro. In most cases, it is the only input. Ogogoro is made with the same basic process that is used for almost all distilled spirits, “fractional distillation.” The palm wine is placed in a metal barrel or drum, and a fire is lit underneath with slowly increasing heat. The alcohols in the palm wine boil at a lower temperature than the water and solids, and they rise as a gas through a tube before being cooled back to a liquid and dripping into a container. The liquid that comes from this process is already a crude ogogoro, and many people produce and drink it like this directly. Others add more complexity to the process, distilling it multiple times, and removing and selectively re-adding different parts of the distillation.
Depending on the distiller, the palm wine is aged for different amounts of time before distilling. Some wait as long as 6 or 7 days before distilling it into ogogoro, while others begin distilling immediately after tapping. The character of the base liquid affects the ultimate flavor. We’re still exploring the exact effects, but it seems like longer-aged palm wine introduces more musky and citrus-peel characteristics, and a fresher base usually conveys more bright, herbal and tropical fruit flavors.
Different distillers create ogogoro with different characteristics depending on how the spirit will be used. Many people in Nigeria purchase ogogoro to mix with medicinal herbs. This ogogoro is generally optimizing for maximum alcohol content with less attention paid to taste, since the strong taste of the herbs will overwhelm most of the spirit’s flavor. Other people drink for enjoyment, and these producers may optimize more for purity and taste.
The ratio of palm wine to ogogoro is about 10 to 1. In other words, a 200 liter drum of palm wine will ultimately produce around 20 liters of ogogoro.
Artisanal ogogoro distillers in West Africa generally use a variation of alembic stills, similar in many ways to the “Filipino still” that is used in mezcal. A metal drum is filled with palm wine, sometimes insulated with clay or other materials to encourage more consistent heat. A wood fire is lit underneath the drum, at a low enough temperature that the alcohol will evaporate, but not the water in the palm wine. The gas then passes through a metal pipe submerged in water to condense it back into a liquid. Finally, the liquid, now an early version of ogogoro, drips into a container. At its core, this is a variation of alembic pot still distillation that is used globally for spirits like whiskey and many others.