MxMo XXVI--Fruit Liqueurs

[eje]

If any of you read (or write) blogs which cover cocktails, you might know that Paul over at Cocktail Chronicles has been organizing a monthly online cocktail event he calls Mixology Mondays.

This month's event is being hosted by Anna over on her blog Morsel's and Musings The theme is send me your fruit liqueur cocktails!.

To quote Anna from his explanation of the topic:

Mixology Monday is a cocktail blogging event and the theme for my reign of terror is fruit liqueurs.

Definition of fruit liqueurs?

Well this is what I’m going for: a sweet alcoholic beverage infused with fruits or fruit flavours.

The only drinks I won’t accept are ones made with fruit only, rather than using a fruity alcohol of some kind.

If you would like to participate, please write up a cocktail in this topic before Midnight, Monday, April 14th at midnight. I will compile a list of cocktails posted and email them to the organizer.

[bostonapothecary]

this sounds delicious...

[Chris Amirault]

Looks like limoncello passes muster. I've got a bottle stuck in the back of the liquor cabinet....

[eje]

Given the availability of many fresh fruits, you would think that it would be a sort of gimme that exotic islands would have tasty cocktails.

Sadly, you are far more apt to find bartenders practicing their bottle juggling than actually crafting tasty drinks. How weird is it to see a stand selling mango smoothies and fresh pineapple juice next to a bar making drinks with sour mix?

So a cocktailian in paradise is often left to their own devices.

The easiest choice is to go to one of the many fresh juice stands, purchase juice, add booze. Most likely it will be tastier than any cocktail you pay for in a bar.

What follows is a slightly more elaborate idea...

If on a tropical island, my recommendation is to purchase a pineapple from a fruit stand.

If a large pineapple, chop half, eat rest.

If a small pineapple, chop whole.

Place chopped pineapple in a glass jar.

Cover with about a cup of (preferably washed raw or natural) sugar.

Add one half bottle of amber rum (Mount Gay Eclipse is fine) and 1/4 bottle dark rum (Myers is OK).

Place in refrigerator over night.

Voila, liqueur.

Now fill a glass with crushed ice, add 2 ounces rum-pineapple liqueur, juice of 1/2 lime, and 1/4-1/2 oz rock candy syrup. Swizzle until the outside of the glass frosts, check sweetness. If OK, float on a little more dark rum, add a straw, and enjoy on a deck or lanai.

Note: This is a less elaborate preparation of a drink from Mark Miller's "Coyote Cafe Cookbook". He calls it a "Brazilian Daiquiri", a name I've never had much luck selling at parties.

Edited April 12, 2008 by eje (log)

[thirtyoneknots]

Note: This is a less elaborate preparation of a drink from Mark Miller's "Coyote Cafe Cookbook".  He calls it a "Brazilian Daiquiri", a name I've never had much luck selling at parties.

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That would be the Caipirinha, no?

[Chris Amirault]

Erik, how long does that pineapple liqueur last?

[eje]

Erik, how long does that pineapple liqueur last?

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Depends who's drinking, I guess.

Oh, you mean how long does it keep.

If you take it off the pineapple after a couple days, don't add the citrus until you mix, and keep it in the fridge (or in the freezer for "shots" as mr. miller advises) fairly indefinitely, I would imagine.

[bostonapothecary]

Erik, how long does that pineapple liqueur last?

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Depends who's drinking, I guess.

Oh, you mean how long does it keep.

If you take it off the pineapple after a couple days, don't add the citrus until you mix, and keep it in the fridge (or in the freezer for "shots" as mr. miller advises) fairly indefinitely, I would imagine.

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when i make similar things i age it for quite a while before i even drink it... it definitely keeps a while... but doesn't last long... i've got some bentonite clarifying a batch right now... its creepy how much it looks like normal booze but is over the top aromatic and flavorful... it isn't gonna be touched again until june... i'm trying to develop the concept of a booze cellar to go along with our wine cellar... my pastry chef is using some raspberry liquor i made 8 months ago to flavor a zabaglione... the flavor is stunning... summer is coming so you gotta start now... this is also the peak of pineapple season if i'm not mistaken...?

[Chris Amirault]

Tried a Boubon Crusta-esque drink using limoncello and ginger syrup. Gack. Down the drain it went.

[Chris Amirault]

Got this from a member who'd prefer to remain anonymous due to a constrained living situation:

First, mix a large amount of sugar, yeast, fabric softener, and water in a 20 gal garbage can.  Let it get active.

After two weeks, run it through the still four times.

Pull aside one gallon of the 96% product.  With the rest, take another half gallon, and place it in a mason jar.

Suspend a fresh orange in a mesh over the product, and allow to sit for a month.  Do not allow the liquid and fruit to touch.  The product will leach the essence from the fruit.

After a month, mix the orange liqueur with simple syrup and take it down to around 42%

Now, back up.  We'd pulled aside that one gallon.  Take your column, and pack it with juniper berries, the skin of two lemons, some sage, and some coriander.  Run the gallon's fumes through this to condense into a very fine gin.

Now, fast forward a few weeks.

Take your basic martini shaker, and introduce a drop of bitter.  Batter that about.  Now add the gin, and a tasting of the orange liqueur.  Shake, don't stir.

Decant into a frosted martini glass, and serve with a fresh twist of Mikan peel.

What could be simpler?

[Dan Ryan]

A wonderfully open theme for Mixology Monday XXVI, but immediately we face the agonies of choice. So many fruit liqueurs, so many possibilities… should it be the funky Adriatic complexities of maraschino? Or the all-round grace of Cointreau? The sleek nubile kiss of apricot brandy? Or the joyous snog of framboise? As with so many other decisions in life, circumstances intervene: a broken ankle means I am unable to get quite as many ingredients as I might wish for. So I start with an old creation, an exhibition of that most lurid of liqueurs, crème de bananes.

The Bellamy

1½ shots brandy (where a shot is 25 ml or so)

1 shot creme de bananes

¾ shot grapefruit juice

¾ shot lemon juice

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. The citrus provides enough sharpness to cut through the otherwise sickly banana, and the vanilla notes of the brandy bring it all together. I added a dash of grapefruit bitters to the second glass. No harm done, certainly.

Up next, the latest experiment with tequila. There are some tortured souls who don’t like gin, or, rather, who don’t realise they like it yet. And we have to make drinks to please them too… This was inspired by a salad that combined pineapple and blackcurrant, and features not one but two fruit liqueurs, if I might bend the definition to include the very orangey, not-as-herbal-as-we-might-hope new-formula Picon.

The Cassiopaea

3 shots tequila (I used Herradura blanco)

½ shot crème de cassis

½ shot Picon

many tablespoons of salted pineapple foam

First up, make your salted pineapple foam, by mixing fresh pineapple juice, a bit of salt, and the requisite amount of lecithin. Agitate with a stick blender, a milk frother or a hummingbird on a stick, and admire your copious quantities of foam. Check the salt level. Shake the first three ingredients with ice, serve straight up in a cocktail glass, and then spoon over a good amount of the foam. Your drink will resemble a fine ale, and should be equally provocative yet thirst-quenching, as the salt, the fruit and the bitter vegetal flavours mingle and meld. (A picture coming, if I can get the upload to work.)

Edited April 15, 2008 by Dan Ryan (log)

[bostonapothecary]

Suspend a fresh orange in a mesh over the product, and allow to sit for a month.  Do not allow the liquid and fruit to touch.  The product will leach the essence from the fruit.

i have heard of this technique a few times but have never seen it in a book... it has been attributed to italy every time and was told it was done with grappa... i wonder if any one restaurant in particulur was famous for it... much cooler than a "stoli doli"... i was almost going to set one up a couple months ago but i still am looking for an elegant jar with a spout at the bottom...

tonight i drank...

1.5 oz. vanilla vodka (sample bottle of triple eight vanilla)

1 oz. mirto de sardegna (mirtle berry fruit liqueur)

1 oz. fresh espresso

shake, strain...

mirto is a fruit liqueur but isn't exactly framboise... mirtle's have a piney, digestiefy kind of character... they are bitter or tannic? in the way pine needles and juniper berries are... i probably don't have the right descriptors... but they are definitely somtetimes fun and always very adult...

the drink might have been a little over the top... i'm not sure if the vanilla vodka had less sugar than the conventional but the drink could have been slightly sweeter... i liked its coffee type of bitter quality and found the mirto more exciting than kahlua but i think swapping out half its quantity for amalfi lemoncello would have been more sucessful...

"fruit's a gamble..." -jerry seinfeld