Glass 1-quart measuring cupDistilled liquors are the sophisticated cousins of wines, but just as no one is sure who discovered the process of wine making, no one knows for sure who discovered and named the process of distillation. Some credit Hippocrates in about 400 B.C. We do know that the term distillation comes from the Latin word distillare, which means “to drop” or “to trickle down.”
We also know why the process works. Alcohol and water boil at different temperatures. Using this principle, a distiller can heat wine to the temperature at which ethyl alcohol boils (173°F), and the alcohol will turn to vapor. If the distiller then captures the vapor and cools it below 173°F, it will condense into liquid alcohol.
Most experts believe that the Chinese distilled alcohol from rice wine as early as 800 B.C. The Greeks and Egyptians also used distillation, and in about 400 B.C., Aristotle wrote on distilling seawater and recapturing fresh water from the process. The first recorded instance of making alcoholic beverages through distillation dates to A.D. 900, when monks and alchemists in Europe employed the process and experimented with numerous ways of using the fiery liquid that resulted.
During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, physicians and chemists believed that herb liqueurs could treat and prevent illnesses. In some cases, they may have been correct, since many modern-day medicines are based on plant extracts and some still have alcohol bases. Even if the mixtures weren’t medicinal, those who drank them probably felt better, if only for a short time. Adding sweeteners to the mixtures may have been an attempt by herbalists to make their brews more palatable.
In that, they surely succeeded. Adding other flavoring agents was a logical next step. Liqueur making flourished in fifteenth-century Italy in the villas of Catherine de Médici, then spread to France and England. Many of today’s liqueurs trace their lineage to those times. Today, as in the past, some of these recipes remain closely guarded secrets, especially those for some herb liqueurs, which may contain dozens or even scores of different herbs in varying proportions. But don’t be daunted by liqueur making’s long tradition. You can make some very simple and tasty recipes at first, then get more daring as you gain experience.
Liqueur or Cordial?
In Europe, alcoholic beverages with a high sugar content and flavoring agents consisting of herbs, nuts, fruits, spices, and creams are called liqueurs. In the United States, these beverages are usually called cordials.
The legal definition of a cordial varies somewhat according to location. New York and New Jersey, for example, defines it as an alcoholic beverage containing at least 2.5 percent sugar.
Your shopping list for liqueur ingredients can be relatively short or long and complex, but most cordial ingredients fall into definite categories — alcohol bases, sweeteners, and flavorings. As long as your liqueurs have something from each category you will end up with an acceptable cordial. Let’s look at these one at a time.
Most cordials range from 17 to 30 percent alcohol by volume, but some have as much as 50 percent. For that reason, the alcohol base you choose is important. Remember that good-quality ingredients result in good-quality liqueurs. Don’t buy the cheapest liquors to use in your liqueurs, but you don’t need to buy the most expensive either. Since the other ingredients will be the liqueurs’ primary flavoring components, some of the subtleties of expensive liquors will be masked anyway. Choose a low- to mid-priced liquor and taste it. If it is free of off flavors — tastes that are non-standard for a particular liquor — or flavors you just don’t like, it will be suitable for making liqueurs.
Although most liqueurs are made from grain alcohol, vodka, brandy, and rum, almost any kind of liquor can be used. Here, in order of preference, are some possibilities.
Pure Grain Alcohol: Pure grain alcohol is our choice for making many liqueurs because it has no flavoring components. It is most frequently found in 180- to 190-proof varieties. Because it is a very high proof alcohol, pure grain alcohol is not available in all states and is not legally available in Canada. People who live on the Ohio side of the Ohio-Indiana border, for example, cannot buy high-proof grain alcohol in their state. Those who live on the Indiana side can. Pure grain alcohol is neutral and is usually diluted with an equal part of water in our recipes. All pure grain alcohols are created equal when it comes to making liqueurs. They supply the alcohol component but impart no flavor of their own.
Vodka: Since we live on the Ohio side of the Ohio-Indiana border, we usually use vodka in our liqueur recipes. Like pure grain alcohol, good vodka has little flavor of its own. Vodka can, however, vary in taste from distiller to distiller, so sample it before using. You are looking for the smoothest-tasting vodka in your price range. Pure grain alcohol and vodka are the only bases that will add little flavor to your liqueurs. If your objective is to retain the pure flavors of the fruits, nuts, herbs, spices, and sugars in your recipes, use one of these two bases.
By law, nonflavored vodka that is manufactured in the United States is required to be colorless, odorless, and tasteless. Since that is not always the case with vodkas manufactured elsewhere, we recommend using U.S. varieties.
Brandy: Brandy is distilled from fermented grape juice or the juice of other fruits such as apricots, peaches, and pears. We don’t use brandies from fruits other than grapes because they are usually more expensive, and we can make our own flavored brandies more economically. Pick a mid-priced brandy and taste it before using it in your liqueurs. Brandy is not for everyone. A friend of ours once commented that she liked the idea of brandy much more than she liked the taste. She was, however, quite enthusiastic about some of the brandy-based liqueurs presented in this book. If you are not sure if you will like a particular recipe, cut it in half and sample it before you commit yourself to a full batch.
Cognac
Cognac is a very fine French brandy. Connoisseurs would pale at the thought of using it in liqueurs, but we have used it on occasion. Unless money is no object, however, you’ll probably not want to use cognac in your liqueurs.
Whiskey: Whiskey is not a common component of liqueurs, although some all-time favorites, such as Bailey’s Irish Cream, do have a whiskey base. Some other liqueurs made with whiskey bases are Southern Comfort, Drambuie, Lochan Ora, Glen Mist, and Rock and Rye. Irish and Scotch whiskeys are usually made from malted barley, while American whiskeys are generally distilled from rye, wheat, or corn. The different ingredients result in a considerable variation in taste. If you want to try your hand at making liqueurs from whiskey, pick one whose taste pleases you.
Rum: Few well-known cordials have a rum base, although our rum-based liqueurs were universally popular among our tasters. If you would like to surprise your guests with something unusual, try one of the rum-based recipes in this book. We think rum and tropical fruits and rum and spices are marriages made in heaven.
Rum is generally distilled from sugar and molasses, so most brands come from the tropical countries where sugarcane is readily available. Rums from Puerto Rico, Barbados, and Costa Rica are usually light bodied and light colored. Jamaican rums are heavier and somewhat sweeter. In some recipes we’ve specified light or dark rum. In others, it’s a matter of personal taste.
Gin: Gin is flavored with juniper berries. Few other ingredients can stand up to juniper berries’ strong flavor. For that reason, there are few gin liqueurs and none that proved itself to our tasters. If you try your hand at gin-based liqueurs, you’ll have the best luck with citrus-flavored liqueurs, but even here we think a vodka base works better.
Liqueurs are sweet drinks. The commonly accepted definition of a liqueur is an alcoholic beverage that contains at least 2.5 percent sugar by weight, but most liqueurs have a much higher sugar content. In fact, a liqueur that contains only 2.5 percent sweetener is considered very dry, and any liqueur with less than 10 percent sweetener can be legally labeled “dry.”
The kind of sweetener you choose will affect the flavor of your cordials, so you may want to experiment with various ones. We do not recommend artificial sweeteners, but there are a variety of choices among natural sweetening agents. Most liqueurs are sweetened with ordinary table sugar (sucrose). Because sugar is more soluble in water than it is in alcohol, we make the blending process easier by using a “simple syrup” to sweeten our cordials. Simple syrup is made by heating sugar and water in equal parts until a clear, liquid syrup forms.
As we experimented with various recipes for cordials, we realized that some liqueurs taste better when made with other sweeteners such as brown sugar, honey, and corn syrup. All of these sweeteners are acceptable, but simple syrup is our choice for most of the liqueurs because it doesn’t impart a distinctive flavor of its own. A few of our recipes call for flavored syrup in addition to simple syrup. These are among the easiest recipes in the book.
Sweeteners help give liqueurs their characteristic body, but sometimes by themselves they cannot create the body texture, or “mouth feel,” that most people associate with liqueurs. That’s why some of the recipes call for glycerin, an odorless, colorless liquid made from hydrolized fats or oils. It gives cordials a more full-bodied texture and has a slight preservative action. Using glycerin in any recipe is optional.
Simple Syrup
Combine equal parts sugar and water in a saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring constantly until the sugar dissolves. Don’t boil the mixture for a long period of time. Once the mixture is clear, remove from heat.
You can use tap water in making liqueurs if it is relatively free of minerals. Most public water systems have removed some of the mineral content from water, but we’ve noticed that some well water in our area has a heavy iron and calcium content that may change the flavor of a liqueur. If you are worried about the taste these mineral salts might impart, use bottled or distilled water to make simple syrup. If minerals are not a problem, using tap water will be fine even if it is chlorinated. Heating the water will cause any chlorine in the water to evaporate, and the flavor it imparts will disappear.
Liqueurs take their flavors from a wide variety of fruits, nuts, and spices, as well as coffees, teas, and cream. The ways to use these flavoring agents vary. We’ll tell you more about this later, but first let’s look at some of the flavoring possibilities. The chart on the next two pages lists favorite flavorings for liqueurs.
COMMON FLAVORINGS FOR LIQUEURS
Most of the flavoring elements in citrus fruits are in the peel. Many of our recipes call for lemon, grapefruit, or orange zest. You can buy a zester at any store that sells specialty kitchen equipment, or you can use a vegetable peeler to remove just the colored outer rind of the fruit. Do not include any of the white inner peel; it has a bitter aftertaste.
Flavors for liqueurs are usually extracted by one of three methods: infusion or maceration, percolation, or distillation. Infusion and maceration are quite similar and involve steeping crushed fruits, spices, or herbs in either water, called infusion, or alcohol, called maceration. The water or alcohol absorbs most of the flavor and color of the fruit. Most of our recipes use maceration. Percolation is sometimes called brewing, and as the name suggests, it is similar to making coffee. In this process, spirits are allowed to trickle through the flavoring agent, such as fruit, spices, or herbs. The process is repeated many times over weeks or months. Distillation uses heat to extract flavor and requires special equipment. Since our goal was to make the liqueur-making process as easy as possible and home distillation is illegal, we have not used distillation in any of the recipes in this book.
Fruit-flavored liqueurs take their flavors and colors from the fruits used to make them. To get the maximum flavor from the fruit, the alcohol must come into contact with as much surface area as possible. The easiest way to accomplish this is to crush or finely chop the fruit. In most cases, you can include the peel and even the pit in your mixture. Since crushed fruits tend to clump together when mixed with alcohol and aged for several days or weeks, you’ll need to stir or shake the fruit-alcohol mixture as it steeps to ensure maximum flavor.
If you are making liqueurs flavored with spices, we recommend buying fresh ones and grinding them yourself. Ground varieties are expensive and will have lost some of their flavor even before they’re opened, since volatile oils that contain most of the flavor start to evaporate rather quickly. A more economical and flavorful solution is to buy spices unground, at a health food store. Use a coffee grinder to grind them just before using them in your recipes.
If you are making nut liqueurs — some of our personal favorites — toasting the nuts in a moderate oven (350°F) for a few minutes before chopping improves their flavor, but you may skip this step and still get delicious nut liqueurs.
All flavoring components are not created equal. In our recipes, we used concentrated extracts and oils — the kinds often used for making candy. You can find sources for these flavorings in the back of this book. They are also sometimes available at gourmet coffee shops and in specialty cooking stores. If you use the less concentrated flavorings found in supermarkets, you may need from two to four times as much as you need if you use concentrated flavorings. We suggest that you add the recommended amount in the recipe, taste, and then adjust according to your preference.
If you are at home in the kitchen and like being there, you might enjoy the process of making your own cordials as much as you enjoy the products. But in our increasingly busy world, time is often short. As we experimented, we found that using flavored syrups, flavoring oils, and extracts greatly reduced the time and energy it took to create delicious cordials. These flavoring agents may contain one or more ingredients. They make the process of creating liqueurs so easy and foolproof that you may find yourself with dozens of different varieties. (See page 161 for a list of manufacturers of these laborsaving oils, extracts, and syrups.) You’ll be able to put together a batch of cordials in record time and create a unique and personal hostess gift on the spur of the moment. In this book, we include both standard recipes, which will satisfy those of you who enjoy the process, and some recipes which will please those who are in a hurry. Those recipes are marked with “Quick & Easy” throughout the book.
The alcohol and sugar in fruit-flavored liqueurs usually extract color as well as flavor from the fruit bases, but many liqueurs are also artificially colored. If you make an elderberry liqueur, you won’t need to add a coloring agent. But liqueurs made from herbs, spices, and some other flavoring agents may not have the color you have come to associate with that flavor. Orange liqueur, for example, will be largely clear unless you add food coloring to give it the traditional orange color. Since food coloring does not affect flavor, you may add or omit it as you choose.
Cream-based liqueurs are the aristocrats of the liqueur family. They are rich and flavorful, delicious alone or over ice, and wonderful in coffee or over ice cream. They dress up desserts — or become desserts themselves — for a fitting climax to a grand meal.
Many of the cream liqueur recipes that friends and colleagues gave us called for refrigeration and recommended consumption within a couple of weeks. Yet commercially bottled cream liqueurs, such as Irish cream, have no such restrictions. Theoretically, the alcohol retards spoilage, but we are not willing to take the chance with our cream liqueurs, so we keep them in the refrigerator. We are not sure what the maximum time for storing a cream-based liqueur is. (Ours never last long enough for us to find out.) We have stored them in the refrigerator for more than a month without any ill effects. In fact, the flavors mellow with time.
We recommend, therefore, that you make the cream-based liqueurs in relatively small quantities and use them within two to four weeks. Pay particular attention to cleanliness, and make sure to use sterile equipment.
If you have a well-equipped kitchen, you shouldn’t need to purchase any special equipment to make liqueurs. Even if you are missing one or two items, you can probably adapt. It is important, however, that all equipment be clean and well rinsed so that you don’t get any unwanted residue or off flavors from lingering soap or detergent. Although alcohol is a sterilizing agent at high concentrations, the concentration in your liqueurs may not be high enough to have this effect. Since the liqueurs will be aged and bacteria or yeast could be present, we usually take the precaution of sterilizing the containers we’re going to use for aging. You can boil glass or metal containers for 15 minutes to accomplish this task, but we usually just run them through the dishwasher and then through an additional rinse cycle to make sure all detergent residue has been rinsed away. We prefer to use metal or glass utensils, since some plastics may impart off flavors to the liqueurs. Following are some of the items we’ve found useful:
MEASURING DEVICES
Glass 1-quart measuring cup
Metal measuring spoons
Metal funnel
Wooden spoons
STRAINERS AND FILTERING DEVICES
Fine-mesh strainer (such as metal tea strainer)
Coarse sieve or colander
Cloth jelly bag
Large coffee filters (for 30-cup coffeemakers)
Cheesecloth
Three to 4 feet of plastic aquarium tubing
(the plastic is neutral and will not impart off flavors)
White muslin
AGING CONTAINERS
Wide-mouthed glass jars with lids
(1-quart or 2-quart size)
Wine or liquor bottles with tight-fitting lids
Assorted decanters, cruets, and decorative bottles with lids or new corks
Not all the cordials in this book require filtering or racking (drawing the liquid off from the solids). Those that use prepared flavoring agents, those with cream bases, and those that have only liquid ingredients may not require any filtering. Other liqueurs may be filtered using cheesecloth, muslin, or coffee filters.
When we began making liqueurs, we put our wine-making experience to use and tried racking rather than filtering. We found that we prefer racking liqueurs for several reasons — racking is less time-consuming and wasteful, and we think it gives better results — but if you are uncomfortable with racking, filtering will work fine. Adding glycerin to a liqueur gives it more body and the “mouth feel” that many people associate with liqueurs, but these thicker liqueurs take longer to filter. When you pour some of the heavier liqueurs through a coffee filter, for example, it takes a long time for the liqueur to filter through because the residue tends to clog the pores of the filter paper. If you use cheesecloth or muslin, the cloth soaks up a lot of the liqueur in addition to filtering out the solids. For that reason, if you do filter your liqueurs, we recommend wetting the filter, cheesecloth, or muslin with water to make it less absorbent.
A Word of Caution
Be very careful about the kinds of bottles you use to store your liqueurs. Many substances are more soluble in alcohol than they are in water. If you reuse storage containers, make sure to use those that have held wine or liquor. Containers that have held things other than food may transfer bad-tasting or even dangerous contaminants to your liqueurs. Don’t use plastic water bottles, milk jugs, or soft drink bottles. Avoid old lead crystal decanters or cruets. The lead may leach into your beverages if you store them for a long period of time.
If you’re using corks to close your bottles, use new ones. Old or used corks can impart an off taste or crumble from age.
Racking eliminates both problems. As your liqueurs age, the solids tend to sink to the bottom of the container, leaving the cleared liquid at the top. Racking the liquid into another container leaves the solids that can cloud your liqueur behind.
Racking is really quite simple. You’ll need 3 to 4 feet of clear plastic aquarium tubing and a clean container in addition to the one you’ve used for aging. We usually place the container we’re racking into in the kitchen sink and set the container we’re racking from on an overturned saucepan on the countertop. The container that you are racking from must be higher than the one that you are racking into so that siphoning will work. Any method you use to keep the full container higher than the empty one will work.
Place the tubing in the liqueur, taking care to leave any sediment undisturbed. Start the siphoning action by sucking on the free end of the tube, much as you would on a straw. Be sure that the end of the tube is at least an inch above the sediment on the bottom of the container. When the liquid starts to flow, tuck the end of the tube into the clean container. The liquid will continue to flow downward until it is transferred to the new container, leaving the sediment behind.
You can use any bottle with a tight-fitting lid to store your liqueur once it is filtered or racked. We usually just transfer the liqueur to the bottle that contained the alcohol base. Brandy, for example, often comes with a capped cork, which is attractive as well as practical. Vodka and other liquor bottles usually have reusable screw caps. In addition, wine bottles are easily refitted with new corks. Some people store liqueurs in small containers such as baby food jars. We store our cream-based liqueurs, which are thicker than other liqueurs and require refrigeration, in fruit, or canning, jars.
Most liqueurs, except those made with a cream base, will last indefinitely if you keep them tightly closed. A cork or lid serves two purposes: It keeps the alcohol, which evaporates quickly when exposed to the air, in the bottle, and it keeps dust and other unwanted substances out of the bottle. Store your homemade cordials in a cupboard or with your other liquors where they will improve with age, as the flavors blend and mellow. Even cream-based liqueurs will be smoother after a week or so of refrigeration.
A homemade liqueur creatively packaged can be as satisfying to give as it is to receive. You’ll find a number of gift-giving suggestions here and throughout the book to get you started.
Fill clean baby food jars — label removed — with your favorite liqueur. Add your own label (see page 165 for labels). Use pinking shears to cut a circle of fabric about 1½ inches larger than the lid, then put the “bonnet” of fabric over the lid and tie with matching yarn or a strip of grosgrain ribbon.
If your budget is a bit bigger, prepare two or three varieties of the above, and nestle them in a basket lined with the same fabric used to cover the lids.
You can find some lovely bottles in various colors, complete with corks, in your local discount department store and in upscale home furnishing stores. Fill them with hazelnut liqueur, add labels and gold ribbon, and give as Christmas gifts.
Fill a wooden spice rack with flavored liqueurs for an unlikely-to-be-duplicated gift.
Fill the carafe of a wine set or a crystal decanter with liqueur.
Make a cruet filled with liqueur part of a gift basket containing gourment crackers, cheeses, and fresh fruit. This one makes a great hostess gift.