Gingerjo’s Blog

My mum made raisin brandy last year as a bit of an experiment. Someone had suggested she make blackberry brandy, but she still had some brandy left over when she’d run out of blackberries. The raisins were just sat there in the cupboard so she mixed them up. Now it turns out that raisin brandy is considerably nicer than blackberry brandy.

Continuing the research (you never know what you might turn up) I’m making raisin and sultana brandy. I’ve added about 500g of raisins and about 500g of sultanas to 1.5l of cheap brandy. I’ve sweetened this mixture so far with about 200g of light brown sugar. I thought this would add some extra depth. Now raisins in particular are rather sweet and strong flavoured - and their flavour starts to leach into the brandy very quickly - you can see the colour change in a few hours. As a mixture this one doesn’t need sweetening as much as many others do.

You could probably make this one within a month or so, but I’m going to give it two. It would probably be even better made in January, bottled in April and left to mature until Christmas. The sultanas have a much more subtle flavour - I doubt if they’d work very well on their own - hence I’ve mixed them with raisins. As the fruit is dry to begin with I’d also expect this liqueur to be rather potent - not far from the original alcohol content of the brandy as there is no juice in the fruit to water it down.

I’ll keep giving the mixture a good shake a couple of times a week and then taste test it every two (this is the reason why liqueur making is so much fun!). A teaspoon or two will allow me to judge if the mix needs more sugar, or if it’s ready to be separated and bottled. At the end I’ll also be left with a large amount of plump, alcoholic fruit. I expect they’ll taste rather good with some custard.

Writing this has also given me another idea - raisin rum. Raisins and dark rum - it’s brilliant in ice cream - how good’s it gonna be as a liqueur?

I spotted some frozen cranberries in the supermarket yesterday and since gin is so lovely with fresh cranberry juice I thought I’d see if this mix makes a good liqueur.

I defrosted the cranberries and punctured them with a knife (I didn’t know cranberries had little air pockets inside - they splut juice at you when you puncture them). This makes sure that the juice can get out and the gin in. I dropped the prepared cranberries into a 1l jar, added maybe 100g of caster sugar and 750ml gin (cheapest gin I could find). then I gave it a really good shake until all the sugar had dissolved and shoved it in the back of the cupboard.

This mix is going to be one of those that takes a while - I reckon it’s going to need a good 3 months in the cupboard and quite a bit of extra sugar. I have to confess I don’t know if it will work - there might not be enough cranberries in there - they only about one third filled the container. A third is plenty for some mixes, but other need a good 50% - this might be one of them. Time will tell anyway.

Because there was so much mango juice in the mix I figured this liqueur wouldn’t take long to mature - so I only gave it a couple of weeks with regular shaking. I also added an extra 150ml honey after about a week because it wasn’t quite sweet enough. I strained it using a sieve, which means that the mixture still has quite a lot of mango pulp in it. The pulp settles so you have to shake the bottle before pouring your drink.

I got about 1.5l of mango and lemon liqueur out of the mix, which tastes more like mango and honey liqueur really, although the lemon was definitely necessary just to sharpen the edge a little. It’s really rather good - it’s very fruity with a strong taste of mangoes and isn’t overly sweet - the honey blends into the honey taste of the mango well. This would be very pleasant on a summer’s evening or when you’ve just come back off holiday. It’s nice and clean as well - sometimes new drinks give you a bad head - this isn’t one of them. Not really a drink for the winter/Christmas menu though and I don’t expect it to keep very well long term either - I reckon it’s probably best to drink it within a month or so.

As for percentage I’m not sure - I’d reckon 20-25% - it has a definite kick, but with all that fruit juice seems almost healthy.

Oh, and a pleasant side effect - the left over alcoholic mango pulp is really quite nice with greek yoghurt and a drizzle of honey.

Definitely one I’ll make again.