Strawberry Liqueur

It's needless to say that strawberry is a very popular flavor. I love strawberry flavors and when I decided to make a strawberry liqueur I had no idea what to expect as I had never tried a store-bought strawberry liqueur before. I've had so many strawberry flavored sweet foods and that I guess that is what I expected, but I know well enough now that with alcohol infusion the flavors you expect don't always come through.

I chose to go organic with this recipe, and I will be trying to do this more often. I've read too much about the fungicides and pesticides on conventional ingredients to ignore organics when they are available.

Finding strawberry liqueur recipes was easy around the net and they were all very similar. Cut up a bunch of strawberries and cover them with alcohol, add spices, honey, etc. I wanted to keep it simple so I took from the simplest recipes and made my own variant.

Follow along!

 Homemade Strawberry Liqueur recipe #1

Ingredients:

• 3 pints organic strawberries
• 1/2 cup clover honey
• 1/2 cup simple syrup (or just white sugar and water to make the syrup)
• 4 cups 80 proof vodka
• large, seal-able jar for infusing

1. It's important to note that my strawberries sat in the fridge until they were mushy and probably close to a state where some people wouldn't eat them. Despite the mushiness and their appearance, most fruit and berries are still perfectly fine to eat when it looks bad on the outside (sometimes even better tasting).

2. Quarter all of the strawberries, place into the infusing jar or container.

3. Pour 4 cups of 80 proof vodka over the strawberries. This should cover the strawberries

4. Seal infusing container and let steep for 3 - 4 weeks.  Shake up the container every few days, or at least once a week.

5. Make up a small batch of simple syrup (at least 1/2 cup) then combine with 1/2 cup clover honey. I personally cooked up the simple syrup on the stove and added the clover honey after I had turned off the heat and let it cool to just warm. Set aside the sweet mixture to cool. It's important to note that you will only use 3/4 cup of this mixture.

6. Strain and filter the strawberry and vodka mixture

7. Add 3/4 cup only of the sweet mixture to the strained and filtered strawberry vodka. Stir or shake well to combine.

8. Place the final mixture in an aging container to sit at least a month. Enjoy after aging!

Sipping, smelling and thinking

Strawberry liqueur - almost.. whiskey colored?

This liqueur won't disappoint the eyes. Red, almost amber-red if that is possible. Depending on the lighting you'll get a orange-red to an amber-red. It'll look great in a decorative bottle or gift wrappings.

It's worth noting that at the time of this review the Strawberry liqueur has aged nearly 1 year and 3 months. I got lazy for a long while and haven't been writing much.

Floral is what I think when it hits my nose. Flowers, bouquet, maybe some orange and spice type notes. It's fairly subtle and not too strong, has a hint of acidity to the aroma. This type of aroma I think is polarizing; some may find it sickly and others may be really attracted to it.

The interesting thing about this homemade Strawberry liqueur is that it doesn't taste like strawberries. You may have noticed that about many fruit flavored foods and drinks. Often it is some component of the flavor that is passed through in processing, but never the entire flavor or smell of the food in it's natural state.

In the case of this liqueur I think it does carry a lot of strawberry flavor. The tart and acidity of the strawberries are carried into the liqueur in a very balanced way. The clover honey sweetens it just enough and doesn't overpower the acid tart berry flavor. Alcohol bite is hidden enough that even a new drinker might enjoy this straight or on ice.

Oxygen Exposure

During the aging, I did open this liqueur a few times to taste it. I'll say that within the first few months it wasn't too appealing to me. At first it was much too acidic and the more subtle flavors didn't come through. After mellowing for nearly a year now I think its definitely near a peak. My wife and I both enjoy it right now, which is unusual because she normally gravitates towards really sweet drinks and I enjoy a range of bitter, sour and tart drinks.

Opening this one several times before testing may have changed the flavor drastically compared to having a sealed bottle. I need to start double batching and using many small permanently sealed bottles. That way I can try them at different points without exposing the whole batch.

Concluding

Finally, I think this would be good straight, or as a mixer, though I'm leaning more towards this one being an after-dinner sipping liqueur. If you mix this, it'll be hard to not hide the floral notes and you may end up with a more solely acidic or tart flavor add-in to your cocktail.

I'll definitely be making this one again! Going to enjoy finishing off this bottle over the next few months.

If you try this strawberry liqueur recipe, please let me know how it comes out for you!

Chambord Liqueur Royale de France

When I think of unique liquor or liqueur bottles; the first one coming to mind is almost always Chambord. For many years Chambord's easily identifiable bottle has stood out on the shelf. The gold belt over the deep purple liqueur and interesting globe shape make it very easy to recognize.

Before this liqueur review I had never tried it outside of a cocktail, so let's take a deeper look.

Background:

Chambord liqueur is said to be inspired by a raspberry liqueur once produced in the Loire Valley of France in the late 17th Century. To this day many delicious  liquors are produced in that valley, such as Cointreau, Triple Sec and Royal Combier.

The original liqueur inspiring Chambord was supposedly introduced to King Louis XIV during one of his visits to the Chateau de Chambord. Royalty in those times always had the best of the best and it was common for many fine spirits to be had with lavish meals.

Chambord's website says they craft this liqueur from the world's finest raspberries and blackberries, Madagascar vanilla, Moroccan citrus peel, honey and cognac. This is all done on the premises of a traditional Loire Valley Chateau south of Paris.

Their creation process includes steeping of blackberry and raspberry blends in French spirits for four weeks. Then they perform an extraction of the current infusion and a second layer of spirits is added to the fruit to capture essences of the whole fruit blend. The second infusion sits for two weeks before it is drawn off and they press the fruit to get the natural sugars and juices. Finally all of the infusions and juices are married with proprietary blends of cognac, all-natural extracts of the ingredients mentioned previously as well as un-specified spices and herbs.

The result is of course a complex set of fruit and herb flavors blended with elegant cognac.

Due to the recently ever incresing trend of organics I want to mention that they do specify the ingredients in Chambord are all-natural, but not whether they are organic. This means they are likely not organic. As organic is becoming a huge trend lately and if they were using organic they would probably want to push that. Maybe if I get bored I'll send them an E-mail and ask just in case.

The Royal Test:

As you pour it into a tasting glass you will think dark, very dark red wine, but with the viscosity of maple syrup. With a swirl the deep purple-red adheres to the sides of the glass so you can get a good aroma. The color looks royal in a fancy glass and someone might even think your classy, but we know your not.

The bottle itself is about as Royal as you can get. A gold lettered belt wraps an orb glass and climaxes with a royal crown on top. Research reveals that the style is meant to resemble a Globus Cruciger.

As you lift the Chambord to your nose the raspberry aroma comes on strong and brings up a mix of nearly grapey intense raspberry goodness with lingering hints of citrus and vanilla.

What will your tongue feel? It feels a bit like drinking raspberry honey. Honey, vanilla, maybe some orange, apple and grape. This stuff conjures up visions of a fruit basket. Whereas it is easy for most liqueurs to end up overly sweet, the flavors are so intense that it balances and moderates the sweet.

Final:

Many who have not acquired a love for liquor, liqueurs and wine will claim "cough syrup" or "medicine". Several of my non-alcoholic friends brought this up when I offered them a taste. However for me it smells, feels and tastes much more complex. I think when you are not used to a variety of alcohol based flavors that pretty much any cherry or raspberry type flavors will make a non-drinker think of cough medicine.

Personally I would drink this after or with a very savory meal, or just over a single ice cube. For my taste it is delicious and the honey texture with raspberry bitter-tart is amazing. I look forward to trying a round of cocktails with Chambord as a primary component.

Home-made Raspberry Liqueur

This would be the first attempt in my journey of Liqueur making. I obtained a recipe from Gunther Anderson's site that sounded easy. For which I pretty much followed the recipe except for one deviation which I'll explain in a minute. First the original recipe.

Homemade Raspberry Liqueur (Hughes) Recipe

From: Eric Hughes

• 2 cups whole fresh raspberries
• 3 cups vodka
• 1 1/2 cup sugar syrup
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

"Steep for 2 weeks. Strain and Filter. Add sugar syrup and vanilla extract. Age as long as possible (at least one week).

I found that the vanilla extract smoothed out the vodka's taste without overpowering the raspberries."

Source for recipe

First, the recipe calls for vodka but does not mention the proof. The majority of recipes I have seen call for 100 proof or 80 proof, but unfortunately I did not have 80 proof, only 100 at the time. I figured I could dilute it a bit with some filtered water, so I used 2 and 1/2 cups of 100 proof vodka with 1/2 cup water. I really was not being scientific about this, being my first Liqueur. No idea what proof the final product will end up as.

After steeping for two weeks, filtering and adding in the called amount of sugar syrup I felt it was a little too tart and maybe too much of the alcohol bite. I then proceeded to add in about 3/4 cup *more* sugar syrup than originally called for.

Adding the additional syrup turned out to be a mistake in the end. After aging for a few more weeks the tartness and bite mellowed out far more than expected and I ended up with an overly sweet concoction. Next time I make this one I'll be sticking to the original recipe to see how it comes out after aging.

Now heres a bit of a review for the home-made Raspberry Liqueur.

Visual:

The picture above makes it look more bright than it actually is. Photography is difficult to say the least. However in real life it is a deep ruby red, very beautiful. This liqueur is very appealing to the eye. With the right bottle you could have a masterpiece on the visual side of things.

Closeup of Home-made Raspberry Liqueur

Nose:

At first you get a wash of the bitter raspberry but it is soon overpowered with intense sweet. I don't catch the vanilla much, and overall its a bit sickly sweet smelling.

Taste:

Over the weeks I've been aging this, it has become better and better. However it is still too sweet. At first the raspberry was very distinct and tended towards a cough syrup type flavor, but now its mingled with the sugar and vanilla to become an intense sort of raspberry candy flavor.

Final:

It's not so sweet as to be disgusting, there is still enough tart and bitter of the raspberry to be inviting. Due to that over abundance of sweetness, this is not a sipping liqueur. I feel like this will be useful as a mixer perhaps in some stronger sodas. I will definitely let me next batch age before sweetening it any further and I'm betting it will come out much much better, less candy-like. It would probably be practical for me to be a bit more scientific with my measurements as well.