Homemade Liqueurs and Infused Spirits: Innovative Flavor Combinations, Plus Homemade Versions of Kahlúa, Cointreau, and Other Popular Liqueurs (6 page)
Authors: Andrew Schloss
Tags: #liquor, #cofee, #home cocktails, #cocktails, #liqueurs, #popular liqueurs, #spirits, #creamy, #kahlua, #unsweetened infused, #flavored alcohol, #bar recipes, #sweetners, #distilled, #herbal, #nutty, #creative coctails, #flowery, #infused spirits, #clones, #flavorings, #margarita, #home bar, #recipes, #cointreau, #cocktail recipes, #alcohol, #caramel, #homemade liqueurs, #fruity, #flavoring alcohol
If you are using cork stoppers, use new corks, and don’t use leaded crystal or flexible plastic containers. Most liqueurs (other than those with creamy additions) will keep for up to one year if tightly sealed and stored in a dark, cool place.
The Recipes
- Fruit Liqueurs
- Vegetable Liqueurs
- Herb & Spice Liqueurs
- Nut & Seed Liqueurs
- Floral Liqueurs
- Coffee, Tea & Chocolate Liqueurs
- Creamy Liqueurs
- Caramel, Syrup & Butterscotch Liqueurs
- Infused Spirits
- Always Apricot
- Apple Brandy (Copycat Applejack)
- Apple Spice Hooch
- Apricardamom
- Blueberry Balsamic
- Blueberry Cinnamon
- Cherry Vanilla
- Clear Orange (Copycat Triple Sec)
- Coconut Date
- Cranberry Clarity
- Dark and Stormy Pineapple
- Double Raspberry (Copycat Chambord)
- Drupe Fruit Complex
- Fragrant Fig Mead
- Fruity Wine Liqueur
- Ginger-Peach Sake
- Grapefruit Tonic
- Honeyed Grapefruit
- In Praise of Fraise
- Kiwi Lime
- La Pêche (Copycat Peach Schnapps)
- Lemon Drop (Copycat Limoncello)
- Lemon Lime
- Lime Agave
- Mango Twist
- Mangocello
- Melba Blush
- Minty Melon
- Orange Brandy (Copycat Grand Marnier)
- Peach Pit
- Persimmon Sunrise
- Poached Pear
- Pom-Pom
- Prunelle (Copycat Plum Brandy)
- Pure Cranberry
- Pure Pear (Copycat Poire William)
- Strawberry Tart
- Strawberry-Rhubarb Twin Tamer
- Summer Cantaloupe
- Sweet-and-Sour Cherry (Copycat Cherry Heering)
- Tropical Banana
There are three ways to turn fruit into booze. You can ferment it into wine, distill it into liquor, or tincture it into liqueur. The last method is not only the easiest of the three, but is also the only one that yields 100 percent true fruit flavor.
Turning fruit into wine and turning wine into liquor are complicated processes, involving hundreds of variables that precipitate delicious multilayered sensations, none of which taste like fresh fruit. In contrast, capturing the essence of fruit in liqueur is straightforward. Let’s say you have a hankering for strawberries. To make strawberry liqueur, cut up a few handfuls of strawberries (with the greens or without; each will yield a different spirit), introduce the fruit to a neutral base alcohol (vodka is always good), and set the tincture aside for a few days. Within that time, the liquor will tint to the exact shade of strawberry skin, and when you pop the lid your nose will know that magic has transpired.
Those strawberries, once blushing with life, have given up their ghost to the surrounding alcohol. The berries have turned to chalk, but not for naught. The resulting liqueur has ripened, taking on the fragrance of fresh berries and a fragile tangle of sweetness and tartness. You strain away the dead strawberry carcasses and decant what nature might have intended if she had ever gone on a bender: quaffable fruit. All that’s left to do is sweeten it to taste and invite over some friends.
Because the full flavor of fruit depends so much on ripeness, fresh is not always best. For any fruit whose quality is judged by that fleeting state known as “perfectly ripe,” frozen or dried fruit will give you more predictable and usually better results. Frozen berries are picked at full ripeness and flash frozen, so for cooking or making liqueur they are often superior to their fresh counterparts. The flavor of dried fruit is concentrated, so you can develop a stronger flavor base with far less ingredient.
Make sure that the fruit you use is clean and unblemished. Alcohol picks up both good and bad flavors effortlessly. A little bit of mold on the edge of one piece of peach can taint a whole fifth of peach liqueur. The mold itself will not survive contact with alcohol, but its flavor will.
Because you strain out the flavoring ingredients, the preparation for most fruit liqueurs is quite simple — wash, chop, and mix with alcohol. I remove the stems from pears and apples before cutting them up but include the skins and seeds.
Thick-skinned fruit, such as melons and mangos, should be peeled and cut into small chunks. Berries can be used whole and cherries do not need to be pitted, just cut in half. Scrub citrus fruit well to remove any wax or other residue before zesting or peeling the rind.
(Copycat Applejack)
Homemade apple brandy, or applejack, was historically made through freeze distillation (a.k.a. jacking), a natural process of leaving barrels of hard cider outside to freeze. Because the freezing point of alcohol is lower than that of water, the frozen chunks of ice could be removed, leaving apple cider liquor. Unfortunately, freeze-distilled cider contains unwanted alcohol byproducts, like methanol and fusel alcohols, which is why applejack is now typically pot distilled.
Fortunately, when making apple liqueur from professionally distilled brandy or rum, the distillation has already been taken care of, so all you have to look for is flavor. It’s delicious dousing a baked apple or drizzled over a scoop of maple walnut ice cream.
Makes about 1 quart
- 1 cup dark rum (80 proof)
- 2
1
⁄
4
cups brandy (80 proof) - 4 large tart apples, such as Granny Smith, stemmed and finely chopped
- 1 cup
Brown Simple Syrup
- 1.
Muddle the rum, brandy, and apples with a wooden spoon in a half-gallon jar, stirring to moisten the fruit. - 2.
Seal the jar and put it in a cool, dark cabinet until the liquid smells and tastes strongly of apple, about 7 days. - 3.
Strain the mixture with a mesh strainer into a clean quart jar. Do not push on the solids to extract more liquid. - 4.
Stir in the simple syrup. - 5.
Seal and store in a cool, dark cabinet. Use within 1 year.
Cheers!
Use in an Autumn Leaves (
page 245
) or a Harvest Stinger (
page 253
).
Think of this seductively spiced liqueur as the sippable essence of everything that makes wintertime cozy — snow falling fast, a fire snapping in the grate, and you, snugly swaddled in a throw, just finishing your last bite of pie (damn!). But as you lift your snifter of Apple Spice Hooch, you happily hum to yourself: Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
Makes about 1 quart
- 1 fifth (750 ml/3
1
⁄
4
cups) bourbon (80 proof) - 1 cup maple syrup
- 4 large tart apples, such as Granny Smith, stemmed and finely chopped
- 2 cinnamon sticks, broken into small pieces
- 2 whole cloves
- 1
⁄
4
of a whole nutmeg
- 1.
Muddle the bourbon, maple syrup, apples, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg with a wooden spoon in a half-gallon jar, stirring to moisten the fruit. - 2.
Seal the jar and put it in a cool, dark cabinet until the liquid smells and tastes strongly of apple and cinnamon, about 7 days. - 3.
Strain the mixture with a mesh strainer into a clean quart jar. Do not push on the solids to extract more liquid. - 4.
Seal and store in a cool, dark cabinet. Use within 1 year.
Santé!
Serve warm with a cinnamon swizzle stick.
Copycat Poire William
Even if you are unfamiliar with Poire William (Williams Bon Chrétien is the name for Bartlett pears in France and most of the rest of the world), you probably have heard of its presentation. The eau-de-vie is packaged in a bottle containing a whole pear. How’d they do that?
Well, you gotta love the French. What other culture would have the Gaul (sorry) to grow fruit in a bottle? But there they are, scores of bulbous bottles dangling from Bartlett branches in the orchards of Alsace, slipped over the blossoms before they fruit to create a private greenhouse for each developing pear. This rendition is fruitier than the original. By tincturing the pear in spirits rather than distilling its juice, you develop far fuller pear flavor.
Makes about 1 quart
- 6pears, stemmed and finely chopped
- 1 fifth (750 ml/3
1
⁄
4
cups) vodka (80–100 proof) - 3
⁄
4
cup
Simple Syrup
- 1.
Muddle the pears with a wooden spoon in a half-gallon jar. Add the vodka, and stir to moisten the fruit. - 2.
Seal the jar and put it in a cool, dark cabinet until the liquid smells and tastes strongly of pear, about 7 days. - 3.
Strain the mixture with a mesh strainer into a clean quart jar. Do not push on the solids to extract more liquid. - 4.
Stir in the simple syrup. - 5.
Seal and store in a cool, dark cabinet. Use within 1 year.
Salut!
Let it bring your next vodka martini to fruition.
Pears ripen delicately; miss the peak and their flesh turns grainy, but harvest too soon and you get something closer to an apple, crisp and tart with barely any perfume. Hence the popularity of poached pears. Poaching adds sweetness and aromatics. It softens underripe crisp fibers and increases juiciness. This fragrant liqueur attempts to capture the charm of lightly poached pears without having to turn on the stove. As with all liqueurs, all you have to do is throw everything together and wait.
Makes about 1 quart
- 6 ripe pears, stemmed and finely chopped
- Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
- Finely grated zest of
1
⁄
2
orange - 1 cinnamon stick, cracked
- 1 vanilla bean, split
- 2 cups vodka (80–100 proof)
- 2
1
⁄
2
cups dry vermouth (18% ABV) - 1 cup
Simple Syrup
- 1.
Muddle the pears with a wooden spoon in a half-gallon jar. Add the lemon zest, orange zest, cinnamon stick, vanilla, vodka, and vermouth; stir to moisten everything. - 2.
Seal the jar and put it in a cool, dark cabinet until the liquid smells and tastes strongly of poached pear, about 7 days. - 3.
Strain the mixture with a mesh strainer into a clean quart jar. Do not push on the solids to extract more liquid. - 4.
Stir in the simple syrup. - 5.
Seal and store in a cool, dark cabinet. Use within 1 year.
L’chaim!
Serve chilled in a small wineglass.
Pronounced, à la French,
ah-pree-COH
, this unapologetic liqueur embodies the tangy soul of the plushest member of the drupe fruit clan (fruits with a pit). It is not complex in flavor, except for the overwhelming sensation of apricot meandering around your cranium with every sip. Its apricotiness is enhanced by the addition of almond extract, a flavor essence taken from the kernel that lies inside the pit of every drupe fruit.
Makes about 1 quart
- 1 fifth (750 ml/3
1
⁄
4
cups) light rum (80 proof) - 24 dried apricot halves, finely chopped
- 1 cup
Simple Syrup - 1 teaspoon pure almond extract
- 1.
Muddle the rum and apricots with a wooden spoon in a half-gallon jar. Stir to moisten the fruit. - 2.
Seal the jar and put it in a cool, dark cabinet until the liquid smells and tastes strongly of apricot, 3 to 5 days. - 3.
Strain the mixture with a mesh strainer into a clean quart jar. Do not push on the solids to extract more liquid. - 4.
Stir in the simple syrup and almond extract. - 5.
Seal and store in a cool, dark cabinet. Use within 1 year.
Bottoms Up!
Sip as a tangy alternative to Amaretto.