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Once a friend invited me to relax at his dacha. I could not refuse – I had not been in nature for a long time. We went to the river during the day.
We fished, swam, and in the evening we had a small feast. We drank store-bought vodka, and the next morning a friend suggested that I prepare a tincture on currant leaves.
The story was shared by my longtime reader Artyom.
What ingredients and equipment will be needed
Of course, I heard about such a tincture, but somehow I didn’t have to try it. Well, there’s a first time for everything. First of all, I asked what we need to prepare it.
It turned out that not so many ingredients are used:
- green currant leaf;
- vodka;
- gauze or cotton wool;
- glass jar.
Beauty currant
Such a budget tincture comes out. All the ingredients and equipment were at hand, we had to spend only 400 rubles for vodka.
Important! The main ingredient of the tincture are currant leaves. When choosing them, you need to pay attention to the shade – it should be saturated – and the absence of spots on the surface. If they are, it means that the plant is sick. Such leaves are not suitable for tincture.
While we were peeling off a currant bush, a friend said that if I suddenly decide to make a tincture in winter, I can take dried leaves instead of fresh ones. You can buy them at a pharmacy or specialized stores. The issue price is 200-300 rubles per 100 grams.
The cooking process
So, the currant was peeled and we proceeded directly to the preparation of the tincture. First you need to prepare the leaves:
- Rinse them under the tap and remove all dirt.
- Spread out on a newspaper in several layers and leave to dry in the sun.
After the leaves dried out, we moved on to the next step – giving the currant the status of an alcoholic drink:
- They took a glass jar and almost completely filled it with currant leaves.
- They filled them with vodka.
- Closed the jar with a lid.
- Left to infuse for 10 days.
Note! The infusion should take place at room temperature.
Infused, it remains only to close the lid
10 days, of course, is a long time, at first glance, well, by a lucky chance, I planned to rest at a friend’s dacha for two weeks, so we decided to drink our own tincture before my departure.
What will be the result
After 10 days, the tincture was filtered and left to reach for another 4 days. Then we only had to pour it again, this time into clean bottles.
And here is the first tasting after the second transfusion. The color of the tincture was very reminiscent of cognac. Although after the first filtering, I noticed that it was a pale green. Now I had a light brown liquid in my glass.
Well, it looks like something like cognac
It tastes like currant tea with alcohol. The smell is about the same. It was easy to drink the tincture; unlike the same vodka, it did not taste bitter at all.
However, we decided to arrange the main feast in the evening. Still, none of us knew when we would again be able to sit together in nature and talk about our male topics without extra ears. Still, a friend’s dacha was several hundred kilometers from the city where I lived.
How to serve and with what to use tincture
Before the feast, a friend kept a bottle of tincture in the well all day. He argued that it should be served at the table in a very chilled form. They say that this way it is drunk much better than if it is warmed up.
Note! In a glass container, the tincture can be stored for several months.
As an appetizer, a friend made a barbecue. Again, according to him, it is better to eat the tincture with meat products. Like it or not, I don’t know. But, to be honest, I just missed the barbecue, I hadn’t eaten it for a long time, so I didn’t object.
In general, I liked the currant leaf tincture. In the years that followed, I even made it myself a few times. Along the way, I learned that alcohol is prepared not only from currants, but also from other plants. What tinctures do you prefer?
Dear readers, remember that alcohol abuse harms your body. Take care of yourself!