Decanting for Pennsic

Six boozamahals have been steeping for this year's Pennsic!

MIXED BERRIES CORDIAL
I did the first sitting for about a month, decanted and refilled with vodka and let sit for another month.  Today I checked the flavor and bottled it and I'm not in love.  I don't know if it is that I used a different vodka than previous years (Platinum 7X instead of 360) or I just need epic fucktonnes of sugar and some water.  But it is lack luster anyway so I just left it as is with about a cup of white sugar.

BLACK BERRY CORDIAL
I only had one vodka pour of about two cups and five or six weeks.  I ended up adding about two cups of white sugar and a cup of water.  It's drinkable, but not my best work.

BLUEBERRY CORDIAL
This one had only been going for a week. I poured out about 12 oz of liquid, then combined the blueberries with more vodka and brought it up to a simmer since I'm only going to be able to leave it for a couple of days.

COLDBREW KRUPNIK
So far, so good!  I had about 3.75C of liquid after pulling out the coffee beans.  It could have been ok to just add potato vodka as is, but I'm greedy and filled it up with coffee grounds again,

MANGO HIBISCUS KRUPNIK
Is divine! Got two cups of liquid put aside, and added two cups of potato vodka to the solids for a couple of days before adding to the first pull.

OM KRUPNIK
This is also amazing in how it brings out all of the spices.  Same process as the mango.

I have no idea when I'll be headed to Pennsic (sometime this weekend? whenever I finish sewing) but I'll probably decant everything right before I leave to allow for maximum steepage.

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In egg news, I rejarred a bunch last week and added a can of sliced beets to that batch.  They tasted ok at first, but I am glad to say they did pull in more of the beet flavor in only a few days.

Orangello

• peel of two naval oranges and one grapefruit
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup vodka
• 2 tablespoons honey

1. Combine peels, water, and sugar in blender and pulse a couple of times to a coarse texture.
2. Heat in a pot right below a boil for about an hour.
3. Filter out solids and combine with vodka.
4. Correct flavor balance by adding water, vodka, and/or honey as needed.

There was a call for gifts for the Royalty of the East Kingdom (SCA).  In her writeup, the Queen stated she liked limoncello, which I know I can make.  But I decided to take some liberties to make something more palatable for camping in August.  Originally I wanted to use tangerines or Little Sweeties, but the only ones at the store were shriveled and unappealing.  The naval oranges ended up having the nicest of rinds, plus one grapefruit for more depth of flavor.  At the end of the flavor correction, I decided to add some honey to have a bit of softness that offsets the bitterness of the grapefruit.  The combination worked surprisingly well.

Limoncello

So what do you do when you get guilted into participating in a brewing competition and only have four days?  You make a cordial! Limoncello isn't completely "period", but there's enough speculation around it not-not being period.

RECIPE

10 lemons
1 naval orange
1 blood orange
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 cup water
750ml vodka

• Strip all of the citrus of their gorgeous skins, avoiding as much pith as possible.

• Macerate the peels with enough sugar to extract a lot of the oils through abrasion.

• Transfer sugared peels to a sealed container that can be closed and rubbed, like a ziplock freezer bag, along with half a cup of water and half a cup of vodka, and place in hot-but-not-boiling water for a few hours to coax more oils to release.  I used a closed steamer basket to keep the bag from touching the bottom of the pot.

• Let sit in a dark place for a couple of days (or as long as possible) to continue extracting.
• Throw the mixture into a blender for further maceration.

• Extract all the liquid from the peels by passing through a sieve and then a fabric filter (like a clean bar towel or cheese cloth).
• Throw the peel solids in the blender with enough water and/or vodka and extract three more times.  Between each iteration, taste to see which of the three is necessary.  Later extractions will get mellower, sweeter, and less tart.

• Once you have enough liquid and are pleased with the flavor profile, make sure you have filtered as much of the solids. I didn't manage to get it to go through a coffee filter because of the combination of oils and water surface tension.

SCHPIEL

I had a blast participating at the Brewer's Competition at AE War Practice XXX, despite having no idea of what I was getting myself into.  I've had experience in the past with making a simple strawberry cordial and krupnik, but they take at least a couple of weeks to get a proper extraction.  This one only took three days in a cupboard and a couple of hours the first and last days for peeling and filtering.

It went well; I won the cordial competition!  Mostly because I was the only entry, but I got very good reviews despite that.  I got a little medallion from Anna Leigh at court and a sweet bar rag that I plan on embroidering with the event name.

Oddly enough, I never blogged about the Strawberry Ghosts (Pennsic 2014) or the Mexican Krupnik (Pennsic 2017) that were also very well received.

Strawberry Ghosts were pretty fantastic!  I put a pound of frozen strawberries in a container covered with vodka and left them in a closet for four weeks.  Eventually I was left with the souls of the strawberries in a beautiful liquid to which I added I think a cup of simple syrup and called it a day.  The leftover strawberry corpses were just little bursts of vodka that were very entertaining to eat.

The krupnik was for a competition at Caledonia that I also happened to win.  To the best of my knowledge, I stewed a pound of honey with cacao nibs, chili peppers, and dried mangos, and ultimately mixed it with Luksusowa potato vodka.  I got a nifty sipping crown out of it and I need to organize this year's competition (because I completely forgot to do it last year >.>)

Oh yeah!  Almost forgot.  I also volunteered to help run the Boozy Food division at next year's War Practice...