The Connoisseur's Guide to Making Liqueurs Vol 1

By Christopher Bruce

The Connoisseur’s Guide to Making Liqueurs is a collection of 95 recipes, illustrated with color photos of equipment and original liqueur labels. Chris Bruce demonstrates the different liqueur making methods and the equipment required to make liqueurs for every occasion. Chapters include an Introduction, Legality, Ingredients, Equipment, Production Methods, Notes on the Recipes, Your First Attempt, Recipe Maintenance, Additives and 95 Recipe Schedules with Instructions, Conversion Tables, a Costing Example and Useful Definitions. This complete guide provides recipes for delicious homemade liqueurs, including fruit nut herb and cream-based liqueurs The Connoisseurs Guide To Making Liqueurs VOL 1 is the most complete work on home liqueur making. All the recipes are presented in Recipe Schedule form with detailed instructions for making each recipe using a variety of alcohol bases and both common and exotic fruits, coffee and cream.This book is VOL I of two Volumes. The second volume will be published shortly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Bruce
• Release date: Jul 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301278749

Christopher Bruce

Chris Bruce was born in England and educated in South Africa. After a long career in the construction industry in South Africa, Namibia, Hong Kong and the Philippines, Chris moved to Thailand in 2001. He built and equipped a sausage factory in Bangkok which was operated by his wife. Not being Thai, unable to speak the language, no longer a part of the construction "EXPAT NETWORK" due to the slump in the Asian construction industry, it was not long before he became somewhat bored with life. One way to alleviate the boredom was to write. Chris decided to use his knowledge of the sausage industry to write a book of sausage recipes. This was followed by a book of recipes for preparing meals using sausage and a book of liqueur making methods and recipes. After completing the three recipe books he encouraged friends from around the world to send him jokes and cartoons by email. This series of TAKE ME TO THE TOILET BOOKS (VOLS I to VII) is the result of the huge response he got. Chris makes no claim to have dreamt up the jokes, anecdotes and other amusing facts or stories featured in these volumes and in fact it is impossible, with very few exceptions, to say where the jokes originated. Two Thai cartoonists Kitti Meeboonnum and Wirat Sukcharoen provided the illustrations. One thing Chris did realize was that people do not have much time to read a little humour and the "Thunderbox", as it used to be called, is the ideal place to do so. The internet, the source of much modern humor, is not normally accessible during visits to this most private of places and it is hoped that these "TOILET COMPANIONS" will add amusement to the otherwise idle moments spent in the "BOX".

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Judging by the wealth of information appearing in the press, published works and on the internet, liqueur making is definitely not a dying art. As an enthusiastic liqueur maker I consider it more an art to die for! It is not difficult to make liqueurs but can be very time consuming, especially when making the more complex varieties. Through my own research I realized that the wealth of information available can take days or weeks and sometimes longer to access and that this can make the home liqueur making business very tedious, frustrating and time consuming. In this book, the first of two on the subject, I have attempted to provide the new home liqueur maker with a consolidated, simplified description of the procedures to be followed if you want to make very good liqueurs of your own and good imitations of well known commercial brands. There are 95 recipes included in this book, all of them standardized to yield as close to 750 ml of liqueur as possible. When possible I have provided more than one option in each recipe category, some simple and instant and some more complicated and requiring more time to produce.

I have made no attempt to go into the chemistry of liqueur making. Unless you intend to produce liqueurs on a commercial basis there is no need to delve into the chemical processes that cause fruit flavors to be transferred from the fruit to the alcohol base or that may give the finished liqueur its nose. I have left that to the professionals who have written numerous books and treatises on the subject. This book is therefore limited to the procedures to be followed when making liqueurs at home.

Producing your own liqueur is economical (provided that you don’t take into account the cost of your own labor!). If you own a garden you can use the fruits, berries or nuts from your own trees and grow many of the herbs and spices required for liqueur making. If you don’t have your own garden it is still far more economical to buy the ingredients from your local home brew store or supermarket and to produce your own liqueur for as little as a quarter of the cost of the commercial equivalent. Another advantage to making your own liqueur is that you can produce an almost endless variety from the hundreds of fruits, berries, nuts, herbs and spices now readily available. Regardless of the cost of your time and provided that you follow the basic procedures, you will find liqueur making a very relaxing and satisfying hobby.

The general procedure for making liqueurs is to take an alcohol base such as brandy, whiskey, vodka, grain alcohol (otherwise known as neutral spirit) or wine spirit (which is often used in France and Germany) and to macerate (steep) in it whole flavorings such as fruit, berries, nuts, herbs and spices to extract the flavor. This process may take from several days to several months depending on the source of the flavor you are extracting. Alternatively essential oils or extracts can be added to the alcohol base to give it flavor. The latter method is much quicker as no maceration (steeping) period is required. If solid flavorings have been used these have to be filtered out so as to leave as clear a liquid as possible. Filtering is not necessary if oils or extracts have been used to flavor the alcohol. The next step in the process is to add the sweetening (sugar syrup) and to mature the liqueur until it is ready for bottling. Again maturation of liqueurs will not be necessary if you have used oils or extracts to flavor them. Depending on whether you are making the liqueur strictly for your own consumption or whether you are going to share it with friends you may need to filter it once more if it is a fruit based liqueur The final step is to bottle the liqueur and label the bottle to ensure that you can later identify it. It can be very embarrassing to find that the best of the house that you have just served to your honored guests is in fact one of the failures that you failed to throw out.

One thing that you should bear in mind is that not every liqueur that you make will turn out well. It’s is my experience that, even with the best will in the world and despite following the given recipe to the letter, one is sometimes tempted to stray and to add your own touch. The resulting liqueur may well turn out better than that produced from the original recipe but equally it often does not. Likewise I have occasionally