MAKE ALL THE BOOZE, MWA HA HA HA HAHA!
Sep. 23rd, 2020 10:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bladespark*ahem*
I got a monstrously huge toadskin melon while we were out shopping Saturday, but for various reasons didn't break into it until today. It is gloriously ripe and just perfect, but I'm not sure I can use it up before it goes off!
So I'm sitting here with this massive thing on the cutting board, pondering what to do, when I see the jar of plums steeping for the next batch of plum liqueur, and AHA!
MELON LIQUEUR!
Actually tasting of melon, not like Midori, which tastes like somebody waved a melon above the vat at some point in the process. :P I once had a very excellent Midori cocktail, but in retrospect I'm pretty sure they made it mostly with melon juice, and added a splash of Midori for color.
Thing is, my first batch of plum liqueur also came out tasting like I'd maybe waved a plum at it. I'd used I think eight plums? About half a pound of plums, for a little over a quart of final product. Turns out you need waaaaaaaaaaay more than that!
Batch two about tripled the plums involved, and tastes like plum, but could still be improved.
Batch three is in progress, and will have about two pounds of plums in it. Yes, for a little over a quart of final product. A lot of plum pulp gets discarded in this process, put it that way.
The recipe I found for how to do this said to put your fruit in Everclear. The high alcohol content "pulls" the juice out of the plums (it's funky, you take them out at the end and they're wet, and yet also dehydrated?) When it's done, though, it's too strong to drink, and also not that sweet. So you dilute with simple syrup to your taste, and then dilute the rest of the way with water. After all that dilution, though, it just wasn't flavorful!
So batch two I not only used more plums in the steeping step (as many as I could cram into the jar!) I used some more to make a plum syrup instead of simple syrup. Still used water as the final dilution, though, and it still wasn't good enough.
Batch three, then, is going to use plum juice for the final dilution. I plan to do the same for the melon liqueur right off the bat, no point messing around making weak batches! It'll be nice to have *real* melon flavor, and toadskin melons are particularly flavorful, which I hope will give a really good result.
But yeah, I'm probably going to use up the equivalent of the entire giant melon I started with in order to get the results I want, which perhaps ruins the "don't waste melon" point of the whole exercise, but eh. It'll be delicious!
This is why really good fruit liqueurs are expensive!
I have ordered things to make some herbal liqueurs too, which has a different method. I mean, properly I'd distill the alcohol myself for it, you distill through a "basket" of your herbs, and the steam picks up the flavor, but I am not fucking around with stills, that's way too much work. There's a steeping method that'll work too, though, just you need to use vodka rather than Everclear, as some of the aromatics come out into water better than into alcohol.
So yeah, I'm making a boatload of homemade booze. :3 An appropriate "still mostly staying home because covid" project, I'd say!
I got a monstrously huge toadskin melon while we were out shopping Saturday, but for various reasons didn't break into it until today. It is gloriously ripe and just perfect, but I'm not sure I can use it up before it goes off!
So I'm sitting here with this massive thing on the cutting board, pondering what to do, when I see the jar of plums steeping for the next batch of plum liqueur, and AHA!
MELON LIQUEUR!
Actually tasting of melon, not like Midori, which tastes like somebody waved a melon above the vat at some point in the process. :P I once had a very excellent Midori cocktail, but in retrospect I'm pretty sure they made it mostly with melon juice, and added a splash of Midori for color.
Thing is, my first batch of plum liqueur also came out tasting like I'd maybe waved a plum at it. I'd used I think eight plums? About half a pound of plums, for a little over a quart of final product. Turns out you need waaaaaaaaaaay more than that!
Batch two about tripled the plums involved, and tastes like plum, but could still be improved.
Batch three is in progress, and will have about two pounds of plums in it. Yes, for a little over a quart of final product. A lot of plum pulp gets discarded in this process, put it that way.
The recipe I found for how to do this said to put your fruit in Everclear. The high alcohol content "pulls" the juice out of the plums (it's funky, you take them out at the end and they're wet, and yet also dehydrated?) When it's done, though, it's too strong to drink, and also not that sweet. So you dilute with simple syrup to your taste, and then dilute the rest of the way with water. After all that dilution, though, it just wasn't flavorful!
So batch two I not only used more plums in the steeping step (as many as I could cram into the jar!) I used some more to make a plum syrup instead of simple syrup. Still used water as the final dilution, though, and it still wasn't good enough.
Batch three, then, is going to use plum juice for the final dilution. I plan to do the same for the melon liqueur right off the bat, no point messing around making weak batches! It'll be nice to have *real* melon flavor, and toadskin melons are particularly flavorful, which I hope will give a really good result.
But yeah, I'm probably going to use up the equivalent of the entire giant melon I started with in order to get the results I want, which perhaps ruins the "don't waste melon" point of the whole exercise, but eh. It'll be delicious!
This is why really good fruit liqueurs are expensive!
I have ordered things to make some herbal liqueurs too, which has a different method. I mean, properly I'd distill the alcohol myself for it, you distill through a "basket" of your herbs, and the steam picks up the flavor, but I am not fucking around with stills, that's way too much work. There's a steeping method that'll work too, though, just you need to use vodka rather than Everclear, as some of the aromatics come out into water better than into alcohol.
So yeah, I'm making a boatload of homemade booze. :3 An appropriate "still mostly staying home because covid" project, I'd say!