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making fruit vodka

wayward bob

wayward bob

i ate all your bees
just wondering how long people leave the fruit in. recipes i've seen start at about 3 days. i started a batch on tuesday and the strawbs and cherries are already going pale and the juice tastes pretty good. nectarine and plum are more subtle tasting still. any way of telling how much longer i need to leave them in for? the fruit is floating, so still exposed to a tiny bit of air at the top, varying amounts of sugar added.

cheers :)
 
Ive got 500ml vodka sat with some of last years strawberries in it :hmm: i should filter them out really but i think theyre ok just sat in it. im not sure you can over do it?

thinking along the lines of slow gin leave it for as long as you can stand? :D
 
I think I used to leave the fruit in for 6 weeks - 3 months, shaking every day for the first part of that. At the end of this time, the alcohol seems to migrate into the fruit, which tastes much more alcoholic than the surrounding liquid. So I would always squidge the fruit up, strain it through muslin and add the juice back.

Then you do the sloe gin thing of leaving it for as long as you can stand.

My favourites were blackberry gin and nectarine brandy. Never actually done a vodka.
 
all now tested and decanted, after 19 days. the nectarines went off so that lot got binned. strawberry and plum are very palatable but the winner by far is the cherry :cool: i kind of followed a recipe for that one, slitting them and boiling them briefly with sugar and just enough water to dissolve it. recipe called for loads of sugar but for my size jars i reduced it to 80g. result is fairly sweet and more cherry-y than cherries :D might vary the amount of sugar in the next batch as i do like the cleanness of the less sweetened ones, but all are going to be cherry :thumbs:
 
Got a litre bottle of gooseberry vodka on the go. My lad came home from Beatherder with a few half finished bottles of vodka he picked up and got the fruit from the garden. I plan on leaving it until Xmas.
 
4 weeks at least IME. I like blueberry vodka. It's not done till the colour changes completely. It gets a bit of a tint and starts looking tempting after a few days or so, but it's only ready (in my opinion) when it changes colour completely.
 
wayward bob said:
all now tested and decanted, after 19 days. the nectarines went off so that lot got binned. strawberry and plum are very palatable but the winner by far is the cherry :cool: i kind of followed a recipe for that one, slitting them and boiling them briefly with sugar and just enough water to dissolve it. recipe called for loads of sugar but for my size jars i reduced it to 80g. result is fairly sweet and more cherry-y than cherries :D might vary the amount of sugar in the next batch as i do like the cleanness of the less sweetened ones, but all are going to be cherry :thumbs:
Click to expand...
recipe for cherry vodka, please? Can't have any til the end of this bastarding diet (2-3 months), but might as well make it while cherries are in the shops. Cherries are my very favourite fruit in the whole world. The phrase 'more cherry-y than cherries' almost made me come.
 
maomao said:
4 weeks at least IME. I like blueberry vodka. It's not done till the colour changes completely. It gets a bit of a tint and starts looking tempting after a few days or so, but it's only ready (in my opinion) when it changes colour completely.
Click to expand...


I have a massive box full of blueberries in the freezer. My mum kept buying them for me and I couldn't eat them quick enough :D
Do you have a method for this?

I did hear that freezing and then thawing berries like that means that they don't have to be individually pricked?
 
:D this is the one i started with but didn't really end up following. my jars are 750ml and i used enough cherries to fill it 3/4 full, 80g of sugar and half a bottle of value vodka (i love that it's called "everyday value" :thumbs: ). i used as little water as i could as it dilutes the vodka which could spoil it's preserving powers. when decanted squish all the juice out of the cherries through a sieve. you're supposed to filter it before bottling as remaining solids could potentially make it go off, but a) we didn't have any filters and b) it's hardly gonna be around long enough to go off :D
 
toggle said:
one therefore trusts you will not be drinking any of it.
Click to expand...


No decent human being desecrates the mighty 'uisce beatha' by using a single malt in so base and vile a manner. Why, to do so is MORALLY WRONG and those who commit acts of such unspeakable wrongness must be punished by the terrible deterrent that is PUBLIC BURNING, says I!

Those who defile themselves by drinking the mere blended whiskies have already condemned themselves to eternal damnation and the permanent dislike of the Malt Whisky Society, thusly they may use those lesser blends in whatever acts of evil they so choose.

Here endeth the lesson...
 
with my next batches i'm going to experiment with both sugar levels and time brewing. i reckon any time taken to perfect a recipe/method for the ultimate cherry vodka is time well spent :cool::D
 
kittyP said:
I have a massive box full of blueberries in the freezer. My mum kept buying them for me and I couldn't eat them quick enough :D
Do you have a method for this?

I did hear that freezing and then thawing berries like that means that they don't have to be individually pricked?
Click to expand...

yes. but it can make the product a little cloudy.

this is how just about everyone I know makes fruit liqueurs

usually works out as pack a mason jar somewhere between half to 2/3 with fruit, then add the spirits and stick the lid on, make sure it's airtight. you can give it a shake or turn it every few days for a few weeks. then stick it in the back of a cupboard and pretend it's not there for a couple of months. drain and add sugar or honey to taste if you like sweet drinks.

when you filter, don't squeeze the fruit if you're going for a clear drink.

fruit obviously has further uses in puddings, unless it's sloes that are fairly unpalatable. if you do sloe gin then do a second infusion with the sloes in cider, for about a week. it's nice as long as you use halfway drinkable cider
 
wayward bob said:
:D this is the one i started with but didn't really end up following. my jars are 750ml and i used enough cherries to fill it 3/4 full, 80g of sugar and half a bottle of value vodka (i love that it's called "everyday value" :thumbs: ). i used as little water as i could as it dilutes the vodka which could spoil it's preserving powers. when decanted squish all the juice out of the cherries through a sieve. you're supposed to filter it before bottling as remaining solids could potentially make it go off, but a) we didn't have any filters and b) it's hardly gonna be around long enough to go off :D
Click to expand...
oh, jars. i thought you could just use the vodka bottles... Hmm. we don't really have jars. I suppose they sell them online...?
 
toggle said:
yes. but it can make the product a little cloudy.

this is how just about everyone I know makes fruit liqueurs

usually works out as pack a mason jar somewhere between half to 2/3 with fruit, then add the spirits and stick the lid on, make sure it's airtight. you can give it a shake or turn it every few days for a few weeks. then stick it in the back of a cupboard and pretend it's not there for a couple of months. drain and add sugar or honey to taste if you like sweet drinks.

when you filter, don't squeeze the fruit if you're going for a clear drink.

fruit obviously has further uses in puddings, unless it's sloes that are fairly unpalatable. if you do sloe gin then do a second infusion with the sloes in cider, for about a week. it's nice as long as you use halfway drinkable cider
Click to expand...
oh, oh! mason jars. yes, we do have those - but i'm not convinced they're airtight.
 
spanglechick said:
oh, jars. i thought you could just use the vodka bottles... Hmm. we don't really have jars. I suppose they sell them online...?
Click to expand...

there are places, but they are heavy and postage is high. most cookshops have them, lakelands etc. the range, ikea,

the idea of jars is you don't have to poke all the fruit through the neck of a jar and you can get the fruit out afterwards
 
Sterilising is easy if it's the same as for pickles, was them out with soapy water then 100 celsius oven for about 5-10 minutes.
 
toggle said:
there are places, but they are heavy and postage is high. most cookshops have them, lakelands etc. the range, ikea,

the idea of jars is you don't have to poke all the fruit through the neck of a jar and you can get the fruit out afterwards
Click to expand...


TK Max often have ones full of sweets by the counters.
We have a few few of them and they are pretty tight.

ETA: I have just looked and they have "kilner" embossed in the glass.
 
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