Herbal Liqueurs

For the past couple of years I've been fooling around with liqueur making, especially herbal liqueurs.  I love amaros, Italian bitter digestive cordials, so I've done some research and found a nice old recipe, most of which I could either grow or get my hands on somehow.  I made it last year and followed the recipe but it came out sickeningly sweet so this year I used considerable restraint and made a much more palatable libation.

Liquore de erbe
  • 200 ml alcohol 95%bv
  • 500 ml water
  • 400 g sugar
  • 6 bay leaves
  • 1 sprig of rosemary
  • 10 mint leaves
  • 10 chamomile flowers
  • 10 sweet basil leaves
  • 10 lemon leaves
  • 15 sage leaves
  • 3 cloves
  • 3 saffron filaments
Steep botanicals in alcohol for 20 days. Add sugar syrup. Strain. Age for 4 weeks before consuming.  I made a simple syrup and added it to the brew one tablespoon at a time to the tune of six tablespoons per cup.
Also after reading through recipes of many herbal liqueurs made by monks over hundreds of years, I attempted to create my own recipe using mostly herbs grown in the 6/15 Green Community Herb Garden.  After harvesting the herbs I chose a few things from my apothecary herb collection and began macerating.  After falling in love with Chartreuse earlier in the year I made sure to include a lot of angelica, a principle ingredient in Chartreuese.

                                                                                     Sixfifteen Herb Garden Liqueur

                                                                                          oregano, nine inch stem
chamomile, 30 or so flowers
lemon balm, several handfuls
hyssop, two flowering stems
angelica, half stem
angelica root, one teaspoon
angelica seed, one teaspoon
mint, three large stems
coriander, two flowering tops
rosemary, 9 inch stem
basil, 15 leaves
sage, 4 seven inch stems
dried orange peel, one teaspoon
vanilla, half pod
saffron, five threads
cloves, nine cloves
calamus root, generous half teaspoon
wormwood, dried, three generous pinches
cinnamon, one small stick
orris root powder, half rounded teaspoon
mace, quarter teaspoon
lavender, eight stems
red clover, eight blossoms
yarrow flowers, one flower head

 Steep all ingredients in vodka to cover for at least 30 days.  Sweeten to taste with simple syrup and age two months.

Overall both liqueurs came out very good and quite palatable.  I'll keep trying in the years to come but this holiday season I'll be very pleased to serve my guests a little cordial straight from my garden after a full meal.

Elderflower Liqueur

I posted during the summer about my forays into making elderflower liqueur.  Since then the macerated vodka has been sitting on a shelf waiting for me to pay some attention to it and turn it into a liqueur.  I had nearly a wine bottle full of elderflower vodka and a small bottle of St.-Germain to compare and contrast with my creation.

At the onset the macerated elderflower vodka that I made has a dankness to it, a very green note, one that would lock with clary sage, or lavender absolute.  At first I thought it was a honeyed note that was missing so I sweetened a small batch with Lancaster County, PA, honey.  The dankness in the honey locked with that of the elderflower so that experiment was set aside.

The second experiment I sweetened with white sugar.  In the past I've used raw cane crystals instead of sugar but they add a slight mollasses flavor to the brew, as well as an unpleasant dark colored slimy layer that floats to the top of the bottle as it clarifies.  I'm hoping for a better result with white sugar.

After doing a bit more research in elderflower liqueur I noticed that most of the recipes call for lemons or lemon rinds during maceration, often recommending meyer lemons.  Last winter I made meyer lemon vodka so I did a little tweaking with it.  I also took a look at my collection of perfume oils and decided on four notes to be added;  yuzu, wild sweet orange, neroli and peru balsam.  I made 10% solutions of each oil and added them one or two drops at a time.

Also in my research I learned that most people make an elderflower syrup and then add alcohol to produce a liqueur.  I confirmed this yesterday with a Swiss friend who explained to me how this was done in her country.  Some of the recipes I read also called for fresh lemon balm.

Many trials later I've come up with something I think is truly worth sipping.  I even "fixed" the first and second versions and bottled them separately.  The recipe is a little rough but I think I have a much firmer idea of how to proceed next season.  In the meantime I think a cocktail of elderflower liqueur and champagne would be perfect for the holidays.


Elderflower Liqueur

2 3/4 cups elderflower vodka
1/8 cup meyer lemon vodka
scant 3/4 cup sugar
5/8 cups water
13 drops yuzu dilution, 10%
15 drops peru balsam dilution, 10%
4 drops neroli bigarade dilution, 10%
6 drops wild sweet orange dilution, !0%

Making Elderflower Liqueur

Elderflowers macerating in vodka
A few years ago elderflower became the new darling of the artisanal cocktail explosion.  It was hard following up something as popular as yuzu but those people at St-Germain know what's good.  Elderflower liqueur has been on every mixologist's short list in recent past, specifically St-Germain.  I was astonished to discover that this strange, subtlety flavored libation is a new invention and not the ancient tradition their advertising campaign would have you believe.

Elderflowers grow all over Prospect Park and another artisanal cocktail enthusiast told me that he'd made his own liqueur from the flowers in the park.  I made a point of getting together with another friend, a local forager and farmer, to hunt for the blossoms.  Armed with wildflower guides we set out and identified plenty of look a likes but came home empty handed.  A second foray found what we were looking for.

I've read that the flowers must be picked in the morning when they're at their most fragrant, and that they should be used within two hours of picking.  The stems are toxic and undesirable so the flowers were cut from the stem and placed in a wide mouth jar.  When the jar was full I covered the flowers in vodka and capped it.  I'd also read that the flowers will float to the top, and that the flowers that come in contact with air would turn brown.  The flavor is not altered, it's just not very appetizing, so I placed a clean lid from a slightly smaller jar upside down on top of the flowers to weigh them down under the vodka.  Every day I removed the second jar lid and shook the jar, then replaced the lid.

I macerated the blossoms for a little over a month.  Each day when I shook it I would compare the aroma with the small bottle of St-Germain that I have.  It was only in the last week or so that I began to notice a similarity, prior to that I was wondering if I had the wrong genus.  I find a honey note in St-Germain so now that it's been strained, like many of my other herbal liqueurs, it's waiting for that special local honey to be ready before it's bottled and labeled and ready to use.  Results to follow.