Homemade Liqueur

My other half has started brewing his own beer at home. Not to be outdone I thought I'd have a bash at making my own fruit liqueur. Sloe gin is pretty popular just now but I'm not a great lover of gin so decided to try a vodka based liqueur and as pomegranates are in season thought that they would be a good choice. It's been on the go for a couple of weeks now and I just bottled it today. After 2 months in the bottle it should be ready to drink. I hope it tastes as good as it looks and smells.

So the basic recipe I tried was loosely based on a recipe I found for strawberry vodka liqueur.

I started with:

2 x pomegranates

150g caster sugar

500ml cheap vodka

1 x lime

A litre kilner jar

A home brew funnel

500ml swing stopper bottle

First of all I cut the two pomegranates in half and bashed out the pips and juice with the back of a spoon into a bowl. I picked out any white pith and then bashed the pips in the bowl to release more of the juice without turning it into pulp.

I poured the juice and pips into the kilner jar and added the sugar and 500ml of vodka. Then I added the peel from the lime. I gave it a good mix with a spoon to mix in the sugar. From here on in the mixture was stored in a dark cupboard and stirred every night for two weeks.

Once the two weeks were up the sugar had completely dissolved in the mixture which meant it was time to bottle it up. We have a brewing funnel in the house which is just a regular funnel but with a bit of mesh separating the spout and bowl section. A regular funnel and some muslin would work just as well. I poured the mixture from the jar into a tupperwear tub, mashing the pulpy mixture to extract all the juice and vodka. I cleared all the mashed fruit out of the funnel and binned it. Then put the funnel in the neck of the bottle. I then poured the liqueur from the tupperwear into the bottle. Now I just have to wait two months to see if its worked!

Due to the added sugar and sugar in the fruit the strength of the vodka liqueur will increase as it matures in the bottle. I'm told these liqueurs are rocket fuel. Just need to wait and see.