August 5, 2022
It’s been a few years since I first posted the recipe for my white currant liqueur Current Currant (since then, there have been other currant liqueur recipes, including strawberry currant liqueur, Strawcurranterry, and mint currant liqueur, A Most Peculiar Friend). In that first Current Currant post, I talked about the little currant bush that could, the history behind it, all that. Well, now the currant bush is much bigger, and takes over a fair amount of my time for a few weeks every year, as I chase off the dreaded white currant grubs (grosser than you’d think), shoo off other pests, water, wait for currants to get ripe and then pick them in the moment before they go bad. It is, my little-no-more currant, a pain! But, it’s part of the family now, so I stick after it. And, the end result – a bunch of small fruits that you’d never want to just eat – does make a mighty fine liqueur. There’s nothing quite like it, though it has shades of affable citrus, light on the tongue, the barest whisper of bitter and sweet, a sort-of sunshine-y flavor all its own. Many things I guess that are a pain pay off in the end? That’s too deep for an old booze blog like this one. When sipping the liqueur, usually chilled, all the taking-care-of seems worth it. And now I have this written to remind myself of that fact next year, when the no-longer-young currant is driving me around the bend!
Current Currant Liqueur
2 very full cups white currants
2-1/2 cups vodka
1 cup simple syrup
1. Add the currants to a large glass container with a good lid. Muddle slightly. Add the vodka, stir, and put that lid on it. Store in a cool dark place away from the sun. Let sit two weeks, swirling occasionally.
2. Open it back up, add the simple syrup, and stir well. Place it back in the cool dark place, and let sit two more weeks, swirling occasionally.
3. Strain – I went once through a decent fine strainer to get the fruit out, and then through cheesecloth to add more clarity. You might need a third straining, too.
Tags: cocktails, currants, Current Currant Liqueur, Friday Night Cocktail, homemade liqueur, Homemade White Currant liqueur, liqueur recipe, What I’m Drinking, white currants
Posted in: Cocktail Recipes, Liqueurs, Recipes, What I'm Drinking
September 16, 2011
I feel somewhat bad (I mean, not all-the-way bad, as if I’d spilled a Shoreditch Sombrero cocktail, but still sorta bad) cause I don’t have a super accurate and detailed recipe for today’s What I’m Drinking. Usually, I try to give you (and I do mean you) the opportunity to drink along with me by providing said recipe, but as this drink came about somewhat randomly I somewhat forgot to write down the measurements of what’s in it in a precise and helpful manner. Heck, I didn’t even come up with a snazzy name, and I pride myself, darnit, on the snappy-ness of my drink names (maybe I should have gone with Lant? Lavmi? Mive? LMG? Moving Lavender Gogh?). I suppose there’s still time. With all that said, here are the basics. I took a bunch of fresh lavender from the garden (the lavender was really the impetus for this liqueury drink, cause we have a lovely lavender plant), the flowers of course, about two cups, and added it to a sturdy glass container with about a cup and half fresh mint (we’ve also been lucky in the mint department this year), muddled them up a bit, then added a 750 milliliter bottle of grappa that I wasn’t sure I’d be sipping, stirred, and sealed:
I let that kick its heels for a couple weeks in my cool and dry storage room, stopping by to chat it up and swirl it around every day or so. Then I added (if memory serves) about a cup-and-a-quarter’s worth of simple syrup. I didn’t want it to be as sweetened as most liqueurs, but wanted to take the edge off the grappa a bit. You dig me? Then back down to that cool, dry spot away from the sun for a few weeks. Then I strained it a couple times through cheese cloth (those lavender pips can be tricky), bottled it, and Nat took this lovely pic:
It has a slightly floral taste, underlined with the mint and some other herbaceous-ness, but enough of a kick that it won’t be called a sissy anytime soon. I’ve been sipping it solo the last few nights but am tempted to try mixing it up with some flavorful gin or other choice items. Its flavor is singular enough that it may be tough to find the right match, but I’m game (as long as I don’t get away from the sipping solo, too, that is). If anything works out nicely, I’ll report back, okay?
