Archive for the ‘Drunken Bunny Liqueurs’ Tag
Strangled up my mind…
People just get uglier…
Have no sense of time.
Name: Two Cures Slow Gin
Type: booze
Recipe: This batch started a year ago, with full description here and the final quality control tasting here.
Venue: house
Review/notes: Sloe gin…takes a year to mature (more if you’re patient). Didn’t pick any sloes this year because I waited for the first frost (which came a week ago, months after the greedy amateurs had obliterated the crop). But, I have 3 litres of this batch so it will be a long time before I lament, “awww, momma, can this really be the end?”
Filtering for quality
[DT =Daily Tipple, explained in DT #000 here]
Monthly consolidations/compilations: January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
Qualification.
The marathon need only
Count as completed.
Name: Andwell Gold Muddler
Type: Blonde ale
Venue: Steam Railway, Swindon
Review/notes: First cool temperatures of the Autumn, today, so I picked up a bunch of windfall apples on today’s run to make an apple infused vodka. I also had to drop by the Co-op for some supper ingredients (roasting a chicken and baking some cauliflower in gorgonzola), so popped into the Steam Rail for a pint. The Gold Muddler had the crisp, steely edge that really suited the single digit (Celsius) temperatures.
Also, this was the end of the taper. To qualify for the Ridgeway Challenge I needed to complete a marathon in a certain time-frame and I’ve trained for it as though I was planning to race but the pubs in the vicinity all open early and there are four of them on the race route…it will be a training run more than anything else. Shooting for 4 hours including the 4 pub stops.
Here’s the apple pie vodka infusion to be named at a later date:
[DT =Daily Tipple, explained in DT #000 here]
Monthly consolidations/compilations: January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
The Two Cures Sloe Gin continues to age gracefully and I am going to let it sit until pouring up time, 6 months from now. The colour is deepening and the flavours remain spicy and maybe just a little harsh but mellowing well. So, sealing it up and putting it back under the stairs until November seems the right thing to do, now.
After topping up with fresh gin, we have:
85.91% aged 6 months (the amount of original sugar, as well)
2.20% aged 5 months
2.26% aged 4 months
2.32% aged 3 months
2.38% aged 2 months
2.44% aged 1 month
2.50% raw gin
Next taste in 180 days…. Previous: 1 month 2 months 3 months 4 months 5 months
The Two Cures Sloe Gin is finally fully presentable…smooth, rich, and deep in flavours including vanilla, fruit and spices. There was no oil (from the nuts) left on the filtered liquid this time and it barely tasted like the 40% alcohol by volume base liquor. Five months in and 7 to go, it will only get richer and more complex from here. After topping up with fresh gin, we have:
88.11% aged 5 months (the amount of original sugar, as well)
2.26% aged 4 months
2.32% aged 3 months
2.38% aged 2 months
2.44% aged 1 month
2.50% raw gin
Next taste in 30 days…. Previous: 1 month 2 months 3 months 4 months
Four months in and the Two Cures Sloe Gin is starting to smooth significantly. A bit cloudy on the Quality Control filtration but the final stuff (in November) will get decanted. For now, it looks good and tastes better.
After topping up with fresh gin, we have:
90.36% aged 4 months (the amount of original sugar, as well)
2.32% aged 3 months
2.38% aged 2 months
2.44% aged 1 month
2.50% raw gin
Next taste in 31 days….
Previous:
1 month
2 months
3 months
Three months now and the Two Cures Sloe Gin is coming along nicely compared to last month although it is still a bit harshly alcoholic…pot calling the kettle, etc. This was the last test of this batch at the Eastcott house, so next month’s taste will be a half mile closer to the origin of the fruit; perhaps that will have some positive effect on it.
After topping up with fresh gin, this stuff is now :
92.7% aged 3 months (the amount of original sugar, as well)
2.4% aged 2 months
2.4% aged 1 month
2.5% raw gin
Next taste in 28 days….
Two months into Two Cures, it is time to do quality control again. Not nearly so harsh as last month and a lot spicier, it still needs age. Fortunately it is getting the full year. After topping up with fresh gin, this stuff is:
95.1% aged 2 months
2.4% aged 1 month
2.5% raw
Until next month….
“It’s not record night,”
I protest before ten more
Records and drinks pass.
Name: Apple Bourbon Toddy
Type: booze
Recipe: two shots of apple bourbon topped with boiling water (I used Airborne Apple, but it is a limited run)
Venue: at the house, sheltered from the storm (and listening to records and cd’s)
Review/notes: this stuff really benefitted from the extra age on the nuts, noted in the original post…once the last of the cloud has settled and we do the final decant it will be quite lovely liqueur
[DT =Daily Tipple, explained in DT #000 here]
Four weeks after starting the infusion I could wait no longer (the initial process described earlier, here). So, the cheesecloth and funnel came out and the liqueur deployed, a rapid deployment compared to last years 6 week batch. I finally settled on the Band of Brothers theme reckoning apples from this tree probably fed a few of the boys 70 years ago.
I have had a taste or two along the way, once two weeks ago when it was still a bit harsh (but much mellower than the week before that). Some of that may have been down to our choice to cut the brown sugar in half and some might have been the short aging process. Still, the apples themselves shone through drafting their malic acid and natural sugars for the effort, but they were also very tart fruit and there is an almost lemon peel bite to this batch. And, two weeks more steeping (and a handful of walnuts) would really have mellowed the drink: it’s meant to be strongly alcoholic but not to taste or smell that way.
I promised the guy at Magnum Wine Shop a taste but it turned out such a disappointment compared to the last 7 or 8 experiments that I feel like I will have to qualify the description. At least he’ll probably beg off any future offers from me (although, that’s disappointing, as well). Harsh, brutal, and with God on its side.
[UPDATE: The sharp edge settled a little over night, but after the frankly successful toddy the remaining liquid has been put back on top of a handfull of walnuts and another apple to steep for two more weeks.]
The Two Cures Sloe Gin is coming along nicely. The monthly Quality Control tests show it to still be strongly gin-like but assuming colour, sweetness, and fruit and nut aspects hoped for, albeit with a very harsh and even oily edge to it that should mellow over the course of the year. A total of 125 mL taken and bottles topped up with clean gin…so we have 97.5% that is 1 month old and 2.5% at t=0.
With time to kill before the bus, I searched for apples to make apple infused bourbon for Christmas. Up the Stag Hill (named for the Stag, a long closed pub), I started seeing apples along the kerb but no source until I got close to the top and spotted this tremendous tree heaving with fruit. Finding some firm, unbruised windfall specimens at the base of a hedge I filled my backpack and headed home.
Later while washing the sweet-smelling pieces to remove the likely layer of dog (and, probably, human) urine, I pondered the possible name for this batch of drink. Probably something to do with the “Band of Brothers” theme I got obsessed with earlier in the day — Screaming Eagles, or Easy Company, or something with a parachute theme. Two bottles worth this time, both Clarke’s, of course.
Half a bottle of flour remaining, to use on the return trip….
Okay, I haven’t been to the Crown and Anchor or, if I have, it was in one of my drunken stupors* during graduate school (I seemed to wake up in Austin frequently). This has more to do with the Drunken Bunny shirt offer last month…and it looks more like a yuppie-themed dive than anything as authentically dive-y as the Scumdown, where I first got tore-up with the shirt’s source (see below).
The call to G-Had was hot so I headed to Chilton Foliat to test drive the new shirt, just arrived from a wanker I know in Colorado [btw, I need to have some new Drunken Bunny shirts made to get your size, Brownie]. It comes from a dive in Austin, the Crown and Anchor, and has been in transit since 15 October according to the US Customs stamp (the delay, no doubt, has to do with the liberal dope laws in Colorado as does the obvious tampering with the packaging). An extra-large, it makes the outer layer of cold weather running kit but it might shrink once laundered … although that is unlikely to happen until a stranger comments on the odour — some traditions must be upheld.
Chilton Foliat is a nice little village in the Kennet valley with steep hills on either side of the river and a pub that doesn’t open till noon so I left the bus stop to pollute the trail and to make my way to Ramsbury where, as luck would have it, my first pint wearing the new shirt would be at the Crown and Anchor (link to follow). This was auspicious and as such I didn’t even realise the fact until I was making plans to hit the Bell at the bottom of the hill just as I was reaching the bottom of my glass.
The trot back involved more trail help for the NWH3 and ended at the Wheatsheaf where the mysterious vanishing cue ball — not experienced since The King’s Arms in All Cannings (coincidentally also with a lesbian motif, there only decorative) — recurred … Brownie, this deserves a spot of honour when it arrives (and where the fuck is my gnome?).
+++++++++++++++++
*As Bob Dylan once sang:
“I may look like the Mayor of Toronto,
But, I feel just like Jesse James.”
[Photos above were for baseline colour to monitor infusion progress throughout the year.]
Sloe gin manufacture is a test of patience every step of the way…tests I generally fail. For instance, this year’s batch was started at Halloween 2012 for use over Thanksgiving and Christmas this year but I couldn’t wait any longer and filtered it at the end of September. At least there was a lot of it and it would last till Thanksgiving, right? Well, erm, there is about 150 mL left that I promised workmates as a taster; shit.
The other test of self-control I generally fail revolves around the harvest. Traditionally, the sloes stay on the bush until the first frost which has a couple of practical benefits: they become sweeter with time (and they need all the help they can get), they shrink a little thus concentrating the other flavours, and in a hard frost the skins will burst so you don’t have to poke holes in them. Mild autumnal weather these last several years has meant the first frost has been well into October and I have just gone around tradition and picked in September (when, traditionally, there would already have been frost) then stored the berries in the freezer a few days.
This year, though, I did it. On Sunday the 10th of November 2013 with the first frost on the ground and crippling muscle spasms in my back, glutes and hamstrings I made my way up Brimble Hill to several caches I scoped out in September. Brimble Hill is one of my regular running routes as out-and-back from the house gives me two reasonably steep climbs (and descents) over about 6½ miles; on route there, I’ve been watching with distress the sloes fall of their own weight since the end of Summer. At last, the time was here so I downed a couple of Ibuprofen-and-Codeine tablets chased with a couple of shots of bourbon, did what little stretching I could manage before the drugs settled in, and grabbed a bucket to fill.
There were several stashes I intended to deplete all centred on the Burderop Forest at the top of the hill. The idea was to get some that received morning sun, some with evening sun, some with an all-day Southern face, and some from down the thickly wooded trail. It went well at first with my east facing batch near an abandoned block of flats adjacent to an old military hospital. This camp has a long history starting before the First World War and that seemed to finish, from local accounts, as a US military mental institution. I have heard colourful stories from folks that used to work there: one favourable at the bottom of the post linked here, and another not so much in the comments of this post, linked here, but the much more interesting and compelling history might be found at the site, here, maintained by the Swindon Borough Council.
Medieval earthworks near the bottom of the Ladder Hill, where someone went medieval on the sheep field blackthorn hedge
The all South-facing bushes exist along the uphill side of the road near the bus stop which, sadly, does not run on Sunday (and on this one, neither did I). The hill, a muddy mess from some logging trucks and the torrential rains the last couple of weeks, provided its share of fruit to the pot, too; but, the Western-facing bushes — along a sheep field at the bottom of the route — were completely stripped save for a dozen or so stray sloes deep in the thorns. Those over-eager bastards!
The frost was mild, but at least it was a frost. To finish the job I stored them in the freezer for most of the week before buying four liters of the cheapest gin I could find and starting the batch. To complement the location, I included a few large handfuls of nuts in each jug.
I wasn’t sure what to call it when it comes out. We’ve already had Devil’s Punchbowl (after its location of origin) and Monstrous Erection (after its location of origin). I was thinking it should be something to do with post-traumatic stress disorder (the mental hospital angle) or Remembrance Day and poppies (since they were gathered at a WWI training camp on Remembrance Sunday).
Then it hit me like a freight train (there used to be a rail depot up here): Two Cures. One jug has a jalepeño in it (Texas Medicine) and the other is just Railroad Gin. That’s what will make people just get uglier a year from now…a FULL year, this round.
Or, earlier. It’s hard to say, for sure…I have no sense of time.
The latest addition to the Drunken Bunny Liqueurs stockpile is a Monstrous Erection (taking its name from a contemporary description of the Faringdon Folly — known then as “Lord Berner’s Monstrous Erection” — near which I picked the berries last Halloween). Patience paid off with two liters of deeply coloured wonder.
The original post on this batch suggested I might hold out till Christmas but the first frost could happen soon and I want to hit my newly located stash while the ice is still on them so I really needed the jug emptied. Still, the especially long steep suggested by Eammon (a colleague at the labs) was the right choice — the cheap gin extracted the pulp, skins, and pips to yield a complex and smooth mixture of spice, berry, tannin, and vanilla at approximately 80 proof. Precisely what I hoped for lo those many months ago.
Dessert beverages for Autumn start with this delightful cherry bourbon. The recipes I trust most do not prescribe sugar, but I opted to start with 1 cup for 1.4 liters of bourbon as we are only using this for desserts or for glazing a roasted bird.
The sugar was followed by 4 cups of black cherries:
These are sliced on one side as deep as the pit, which is left in to steep with the rest of the fruit.
Then, the bourbon (two lovely bottles of Clarkes) is poured on. This is shaken every day or two for 6½ weeks…this batch was started 10 August and steeped until 25 September.
At the end of the steep, the liqueur is strained and filtered. The fruit, now quite alcoholic, can be pitted and used in other concoctions. I plan to put some into softened ice cream and made a boozy batch of cherry yogurt out of the rest.
The cherries partitioned for freezing and future use (found the bottle in a charity shop a few weeks ago)
The colour is grand, the flavour nearly perfect
The liqueur manufacturing plant trundles on, and this month we filter, bottle, and eventually drink some coffee liqueur: Tio Mario because it is a little manlier than Tia Maria.
Most of the online recipes use espresso beans slightly crushed, but I used to make this stuff in the early 80’s out of ground espresso so that’s what I will do here.
Also, a very good clearinghouse for this hobby is Boozed and Infused and they strongly suggest using bourbon as the base liquor. You should probably take their advice, but this is a walk down memory lane so I used vodka…the original batches involved USP absolute ethanol liberated from the clutches of the Auburn University School of Pharmacy and College of Engineering.
I started with a 700 mL bottle, which is about 24 US fluid ounces (approximately 4 good coffee cups). So, I spooned enough coffee in to make 8 cups (I want this to be strong) and the amount of sugar I would typically use for 5 cups (two rounded per cup, for me). Fill and store, as normal, shaking every now and then for at least 4 weeks…this batch was started 12 December.
Filtering is as I have been doing for the other liqueurs, starting with the coarse screening through my unplugged coffee maker and then through an old hashing t-shirt (although these should become scarce in the upcoming months). It is strong, having aged a full month and starting with ground coffee, but it is copacetic and sublime…White Russians for me!
I filtered and bottled the apple bourbon for New Year’s Day, and it turned out pretty good. The apples were still surprisingly firm and packed with bourbon goodness but once out of the liquor they softened quickly; at the end of the holidays I get out of the baking mood so if I am ever going to use these to make a bonus treat I need to plan ahead so filtration happens at the START of the hols.
I only coarse filtered this so there is a little cloudiness that bothers neither of us; I suspect this will settle if the beverage lasts that long. We poured a wee dram each into our whisky tumblers and tried a few sips. The apple front is definitely there and provided a very sweet mouth, not cloying but surprising (next batch, I will add even less brown sugar, although this appears in the finish and may help kick-start the initial infusion). The cinnamon is fairly astringent but not as pronounced as I expected/feared. The cheap bourbon (half Jim Beam and half Clarke’s, my fave over here) benefitted from the malic acid released from the apples and seemed smoother than I remember (I’ll double-check this soon), but the best thing, by far, was the finish.
Walnuts. I added a handful of walnuts hoping for a few of the woody compounds to express themselves, and they did with strong vanilla flavours and tannic acids that belie the short storage time. But, the finish was like swallowing a mouthful of walnuts. I thought this was just me projecting my ‘creator’s foreknowledge’ on my glassful, but Jackie also commented on it as surprising and the most pleasant part of the overall pleasant experience. Hooray.
Oh, right, the label. I took the apples from trees growing along the workers’ cycle path below the old railroad scrapyard that became the site of the Oasis Leisure Centre (from which the band gleaned its name). I was going to call it ‘Wonderwall,’ but then found the cd-single label for the Magic Apple Pie and, being lazy, slapped the Drunken Bunny on it and claimed it for my own.
The process takes time so spend an hour or so coming up with a label for the final product. This one relates to the source of the berries:
This will be a short-term (6 week) batch, but I also have another, larger jug that I will continue to shake every few days until Christmas 2013. Past steps include:
The Endless British Pub Crawl 
