Mimi Freid - Making Liqueurs for Gifts: Storeys Country Wisdom Bulletin A-101

Mimi Freid

Liqueur making is fun and easy and can be adjusted to your personal taste after minimal experimentation. Many people find commercial brand liqueurs too sweet; youll have the option to adjust the sugar content and will find your lighter homemade versions just as tasty (sometimes better!) and a lot cheaper, too. Glycerine may be added if a thicker consistency is desired. It should be noted the shelf life after maturation is six to eight months, varying with each blend. Be sure to mark the date bottled and date to use by on the bottle to ensure maximum quality.

Liqueurs are not limited to use as an after dinner drink. Many make a fantastic topping over ice cream, an exotic marinade or glaze, and a dessert treat when mixed in coffee. The possibilities in baking are numerous and offer a substantial saving over store-bought products.

Health food stores will have the best selection for many of the ingredients, and often are less expensive. Frozen, canned, or dried fruits may be used, but flavors will often not be as full. Herbs, nuts, and extracts may be added and/or substituted in recipes creating an endless variety of combinations. Try a few basic recipes before experimenting to develop a feel for proportions.

Liqueurs should mature at least a week before drinking, preferably a month in most cases. Storing tends to round out the taste, flavor, and brilliance and gives an all around better product. Be sure to keep a journal of ingredients, amounts, aging time, etc. for troubleshooting and to assure duplication. Batches may vary however, for a variety of reasons. Fruit freshness can affect the taste as can shorter aging time. See Fine-Tuning Your Liqueurs, page 8.

I must mention it is UNLAWFULto make liqueurs for resale or call them by their commercial name. Good inspiration to title your own brand name!

Good luck and I hope you and your friends will enjoy your new hobby!

Brandy, remarked a nameless North American Indian in James G. Frazers The Golden Bough, must be a decoction of hearts and tongues, because after drinking it I fear nothing, and I talk wonderfully.

Indeed, brandys use as a medicine is prominent throughout its history, which some scholars trace back to the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, Greeks, and Romans. Its the chief ingredient in the 1683 booklet How to Live a Long and Healthy Life Without Sickness, written before the advent of recommending the use of tea or coffee in the morning to strengthen the stomach. Readers and users of the following recipes must decide for themselves when best to partake of these beneficent spirits. But they should at all costs try to avoid the excessive literalism of Charles the Bad, who met a terrible end in 1387. A servant held a candle a little too close to a brandy-soaked sheet that the invalid tyrant was wrapped in under doctors orders!

Of course, brandy isnt the only alcoholic base to use in making liqueurs; vodka is more commonly used because of its neutral flavor. Nearly all the possible alcohol bases, however, share the distinction of being distilled from other substances vodka from grain and brandy from distilling or burning wine. Our culinary predecessors called the latter result spirit of wine, or aqua vitae, the water of life. Doctor Louis Lemery in his Traite des Aliments wrote, Since inflammable spirits have a slightly empyrheumatic taste, several compositions have been invented which have been given the name ratafia. They are nothing more than brandy or spirit of wine flavoured with a mixture of different ingredients.

Some of the favorite ingredients around the time of Catherine de Medici (when liqueur drinking began to be popular among the nobility) were rose water, musk, aniseed, cinnamon, and raisins. The Italian rossolo, made from raisins and an aromatic plant of the drosera species, is still popular today as are many of the newer commercial brands.

Liqueurs are probably the preeminent concoction. To your favorite alcohol, almost any spice, herb, or fruit can be added. Thus, they should appeal to do-it-yourselfers everywhere. Making them seems to be one of those rare acts that inspires the imagination rather than depletes it; in that sense, these recipes may be seen as guidelines only.

There are only a few requirements for their proper enjoyment, one being the time to appreciate and fully savor whatever mixture results. Liqueurs are not to be chugalugged! Perhaps this accounts for their association with luxury. But as these recipes show, even that conclusion is fallacious. None of these suggestions require much time, only an understanding of the basic principle involved pleasure. (A sweet tooth helps, but even sugar is optional in many of the recipes.)

Another requirement is other people. Liqueurs are a social drink; its safe to say that the solitary, mournful figure at the bar drowning his sorrows is not doing it over crme de menthe or pear brandy. It might be nice to experiment on your own, just to get the proper ratios, but theres nothing quite like the excitement of unsuspecting guests after sampling your new recipe.

Use these recipes for holiday gatherings, Super Bowl parties, family dinners, or intimate tte--ttes. Liqueurs are the original love potions so do use them. The satisfaction of creating new flavors will be its own reward.

Equipment Needed

Empty wide mouth jars, preferably dark glass and quart-size (i.e., juice, mayonnaise)
Cooking pot
Funnels
Blender or food processor
Strainer
Cheesecloth or similar material
Hammer or rolling pin (for crushing nuts)
Peeler or paring knife
Coffee or paper filters

Note: Wide mouth jars are used because it is easier to remove the flavoring item (fruit, nuts, etc.). Other type jars may be used, but it will be more difficult to pour into and out of when making. Use dark bottles when indicated in recipe. The indicated container sizes are only necessary when making the liqueur. The liqueur may be poured into smaller or more decorative bottles when done. Its a good idea to put a note of some type on the bottle to keep track of when started, shaken, stirred, etc. Be sure to keep a record book of comments (less sweet, more fruit, just right, etc.) so individual taste preferences will be easier to achieve.

The three steps repeatedly seen in the recipes are steep, strain, and filter.

Basically, steeping is the process used to give the alcohol its flavor. The alcohol absorbs the flavor of the other ingredients during the one to four weeks steeping period. Ideally, the containers should be stored in a cool dark place.

Once the alcohol has steeped, it needs to be strained to separate the liquid. Use a regular strainer and then restrain the fruit and nuts. You want to extract as much juice as possible and will need either a fine wire mesh or cheesecloth lined strainer to do so. An alternative method is to tie a piece of muslin or cheesecloth around the strainer and pour in the fruit. Lift off the cloth and twist to squeeze out the liquid. This can be a bit tricky, but is worth taking the time to do right because the fruit still holds much of the flavoring.