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CHAPTER 1

Getting Started

Distilled 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.

Choosing Ingredients

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.

Alcohol Bases

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.

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.

Sugars and Other Sweeteners

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.

Water

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.

Flavorings

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.

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.

Coloring

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 Bases

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.

The Right 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

A Word about Racking

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.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Cordials from your Kitchen"
by .
Copyright © 1997 Pattie Lee Vargas and Richard Dale Gulling Jr..
Excerpted by permission of Storey Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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