The start of something good

[begreen]

It's cherry season and I finally got around to soaking a gallon of them in vodka. This is the first step toward a delicious cherry liqueur. They'll soak for a few weeks to become thoroughly infused. Then I rack off the liquor and coat the cherries with sugar. That sucks more vodka out of the cherries and creates a strong sweet cherry syrup which gets drained and added a week later to the original liquor. Rinse and repeat until the cherries stop giving up alcohol and look like raisins. The results are to die for. Yummm.

 

[begreen]

We're eating some of last year's cherry raisins now. They are pretty darn good and potent still.

 

[Lake Girl]

We make raspberry cordial - raspberries, sugar, vodka. Store in cool, dark place and turn once a month until Christmas. Strain, get loopy on raspberries over ice cream and enjoy cordial by the pellet stove

 

[begreen]

We are going to try that this year with raspberries too. And plums!

 

[ScotO]

A guy I knew used to bring up strawberry 'shine from down south....Giant mason jar packed full of strawberries, and fill 'er up with white lightning. We'd mix that 'berry shine up with some 7-UP or Sprite and it was delicious....but you paid for it if you got carried away.

Those berries were white as a ghost after soaking in that 'shine for a while, and they tasted like chit, but MAN did they kick yer azz!!

 

[PapaDave]

My first drunk was on cherry vodka. I think.
I may still be a bit hung over from that one....and it was over 40 years ago. It was goooood stuff.

 

[Gark]

Back home as a kid, a friend's folks put a bunch of cherries in a bottle of brandy. They called it "kick-a-poo juice". His folks must have forgotten it was down in the basement, 'cause that bottle kept getting more empty through the summer of my 13th year. It made the sides of our jaws sore, but we just couldn't stop tasting it.

 

[begreen]

First racking today. This is a tart drink right now. The jar has been drained of the alcohol juice, then filled with sugar. It will rest for a couple weeks and then I will rack again, adding the sugary extract to the previous rackings. It takes about 3 to 4 racking to get the sweetness just right. Then it really shines. Here is what it looked like today. The bottle on the right is from last year's cherries and ready to drink. I also did a batch of plums today. This is my first time trying it with them.