The Herb Bag Experiment

As well as sounding like a good name for a 70's prog band, The Herb Bag Experiment is one of my more improvised attempts at making a liqueur.

I'm a big fan of herby digestives (stop thinking of biscuits) like Amaro Averna and (like Michael Caine's Alfred) Fernet Branca and fancied making one of my own. I saw a recipe in my reliable source book - Housewives' Liqueurs (itself a product of the 70's) - for '30 Erbe': A digestivo/amaro that calls for 30 different herbs in various proportions. OK, I thought, probably possible if we lived in the Dolomites or Lessinia, but the foraging opportunities are more limited down here in the flat land of tobacco, fruit trees and reproduction furniture. So I left it at that.

One evening I was rooting through the cupboard for a teabag and an idea came to me: Tisane are very popular in Italy. You can find a remarkable range of infusions in the supermarket, at least as many as in the UK. And most of the bags contain herbs in various combinations - the majority of which matched those called for in the recipe. What if I adapted the recipe and tried to infuse the alcohol with a few herby teabags? Worth a try.

So I pulled out some boxes, selected a handful of bags that contained a heady mix of various flora and set to fiddling in the lab.

Here's the final recipe:

The Herb Bag Experiment
makes 750ml

Selection of herb infusion (tisana) bags
250ml 95º alcohol
500ml Vermouth Bianco
150ml sugar
Grated peel 1 lemon

Macerate the bags and lemon peel in the alcohol for 15 days, shaking daily
Filter the alcohol, combine with the vermouth and sugar and shake vigourously
Leave for 1 month, shaking daily
Filter, bottle and leave for at least 5 months before serving

Here are the bags I used back in May:
POMPADOUR 6 ERBE - Anice, Liquirizia, Finocchio, Timo, Timo Serpillo, Salvia
POMPADOUR DEPURATIVA - Tarassaco, Fiori Di Camomilla, Curcuma, Finocchio
GLÜHFIX - Bucce d'arancia, Cannella, Chiodi di garofano
LIBERO MONDO TISANA BUONA NOTTE - Camomilla, Verbena odorosa, Maggiorana, Melissa

So the mix included aniseed, liquorice, fennel seed, thyme, sage, dandelion, camomile, cumin, dried orange peel, cinnamon, cloves (the Glühfix bag was a shortcut to glüwein that I found in the back of the cupboard), lemon verbena, marjoram and lemon balm. Not bad!

I assumed the vermouth would add more herbinesss and sweetness, so I dropped the amount of sugar from the original recipe.

The Herb Bag Experiment - ready for tasting

The 5 months maturing in the bottle were up a couple of weeks ago, so we popped it open and had a taste… And it was really good! Herby, light and just sweet enough. I preferred it sloshed around an ice cube and thought it came across like a more benign version of Benedictine. I'd probably drop the amount of vermouth next time as it was a little too present in the final flavour for my taste, but the bottle didn't last long. Good sign.

Salute!

Booze update: Miyagawacino taste test, Brasiliero and fun with kiwis

It was a busy weekend in the booze lab. 

Yesterday we tried the first batch of Miyagawacino and on Saturday I bottled off my latest Brasiliero (coffee liqueur) and started off a Kiwi syrup. 

The Miyagawacino has turned out really nice and smooth. At just over 30% by volume it's lighter than it's 'parent' limoncino recipe - in fact, the freezer was turned up way too high so I found all the bottles frozen solid when it came time to pull one out. The taste is still quite lemon/lime but you definitely get mandarin when you take a sniff. I might make some every autumn...

The Brasilio is my second batch. The first turned out to be great for pouring over ice-cream, affogato-style; though it was too sweet and cloying for my taste. In with fresh ground coffee to macerate in the alcohol had gone a scraped-out vanilla pod and some lemon peel, as well as a 50/50 sugar syrup a week of vigorous shaking later. This latest batch goes easy on the vanilla, sugar and shaking and tasted much closer to what I want when I took a cheeky sip. Let's see how it matures in the bottle - I reckon it'll be very close to Tia Maria when it's ready. 

The kiwi syrup is a bit of an experiment. I'd started off a bottle of raspberry syrup ('Lampocchero') earlier this month by throwing 500g raspberries, sugar, lemon peel, some mint and basil leaves and alcohol into a bottle. The recipe said to leave in the sun for a week(!) but I'm committed to shaking it daily for five months before giving it a try. The kiwi bottle follows similar quantities and I'm hoping I end up with a pair of boozy syrups perfect for cocktail ingredients or the base of a Bellini variation next May. (Sticky) fingers crossed!

Salute!