Cooking cloudberry tinctures at home – 4 recipes!

Cloudberry is an excellent berry: fragrant, juicy, with a balanced acidity and an original, unlike anything taste. Her lover was, for example, Pushkin – according to rumors, before his death, he wished to treat himself to cloudberries. And who knows – maybe if he had drunk a useful cloudberry tincture – he would have remained alive. We will not take risks – we will make a healing and incredibly tasty drink from cloudberries and we will use it for prevention. In short – let’s drink, nanny, where is the mug!

Cloudberry is one of the most amazing berries, tasty on its own and serving as an excellent raw material for tinctures! Unlike many other fruits, cloudberries, both during heat treatment and soaking in alcohol, practically do not lose their aroma, taste, and even medicinal properties, cloudberry tincture at home is easy to make, not very long, the drink always turns out to be excellent, ruin it almost unrealistic!

Cloudberries are called “arctic raspberries”, “swamp amber”, “royal berry”, “northern orange” – this fruit traditionally evokes some pathetic feelings among many indigenous peoples of the North. And not without reason – after all, cloudberries are four times ahead of oranges in vitamin C, and carrots in vitamin A, thanks to which Evens, Mansi, Chukchi, Koryaks, Nenets have long used it in the prevention of beriberi, traditional for these areas. Now, if Pushkin had scurvy, and not a bullet in his stomach, he would have been cured with cloudberries – a fact!

Among other things, the cloudberry itself, and any alcohol from it, is perfectly stored, since the berry is rich in benzoic acid, a natural preservative. True, for the same reason it is practically not suitable for making homemade wines and liqueurs. But tinctures or liqueurs will stand for 5 years, and more, which is to our advantage – over the years, such drinks soften and ennoble, their flavor and aroma properties become thinner and more elegant.

Making a simple cloudberry tincture at home

In general, this recipe is no different from a tincture recipe for any other berry. We only need cloudberries and vodka (diluted alcohol), and a little sugar (50-100 grams) to soften the taste. Consumption – about a liter of vodka per pound of berries.

Cooking couldn’t be easier! We put the washed and sorted berries (you can also dry them slightly in the oven) in a suitable jar, pour the main alcohol to the top. We send the container to a dark warm place for at least 2-3 weeks. When the deadline is up, drain the liquid, squeeze the berries lightly through gauze. Sweeten the tincture to taste, if it is too strong, you can add a little water. After thoroughly mixing the sugar, we leave the drink for another week or two in a dark place, filter through a cotton swab and that’s it – you can try and bottle for storage!

Cloudberry liqueur on cognac with honey

Unlike in the past, this cloudberry tincture recipe will produce a denser, sweeter, and richer drink. But you will have to work a little more – mainly with filtering.

The berries are placed in a jar, kneaded with a spoon or crush and filled with alcohol, sent to a dark place for 10-14 days. Shake the jar daily to speed up maceration. After two weeks, the infusion is carefully drained through a tube, the liquid remaining at the bottom is carefully filtered and poured into the infusion. Add honey to taste (if it is heavily candied, you can make honey syrup with a little water, but this is not necessary), mix well and leave for another 2 weeks in the same dark warm place. After that, the cloudberry tincture remains only to be carefully filtered and that’s it – you can try or bottle it!

Karelian tincture: cloudberries with rye breadcrumbs

A traditional Karelian recipe, the output will be something similar to the Finnish cloudberry Lapponia. Crackers should ennoble the drink, give it a slight bitterness, and simplify filtration. It is logical to make such a drink using home-made grain distillate, but if there is none available, but you liked the recipe – what can you do, use vodka. In this case, crackers are not a component of the tincture, as, for example, in the Borodinovskaya recipe – in the end we will simply pass a drink through them, this is enough.

Preparation:

1. Pour whole cloudberries with moonshine, stand for 2-3 weeks in a dark place, then drain. It is not necessary to filter the tincture.
2. Boil the syrup from water and sugar, pour the berries soaked in alcohol into it and boil for 15-20 minutes until the fruits burst and wrinkle. Drain the liquid, squeeze the berries lightly – they are no longer needed. Pour our tincture directly into the hot cloudberry syrup, stir, cover and let cool naturally.
3. From any available container – for example, beer cans, we make an impromptu filter – cut out the bottom of the can (this will be the top), and line the end with the hole on the inside with gauze. We fill the jar with well-dried small (but not crushed!) black bread crackers and pass the tincture through them. For the same purpose, you can use, for example, an empty coal column or just a large watering can.
4. We leave the drink in the pantry for rest, for a week or two. If it still remains cloudy after the crackers, we filter it in the usual way, through a cotton pad or paper filter. Everyone, you can try!

Cloudberry and mint tincture on alcohol

The original alcohol tincture, which uses an unusual, in general, combination of “cloudberry-mint”.

Preparing a drink is more difficult than all the previous ones, but the result is more interesting.

1. Mash the cloudberries, squeeze the juice with several layers of gauze or thin cloth. Set aside the juice in the refrigerator, add mint to the cake and pour in alcohol. Insist 2 weeks in a dark warm place.
2. After settling, the liquid is drained, the cake is squeezed out with gauze.
3. From all the sugar and water we make a simple sugar syrup – what it is and how it is prepared, read in this article. Let the syrup cool to room temperature.
4. We combine the resulting tincture with pre-squeezed juice, gradually add the syrup until the drink becomes sweet enough.
5. After blending, the tincture should rest for a couple of weeks in a cool place. After that, it will need to be filtered and everything is ready!

As we can see, it is quite possible to make cloudberry tinctures at home, such a drink allows for a variety of experiments, you can always add your favorite spices to it (a little), replace sugar with honey of various varieties. Also, cloudberries in tinctures are in perfect harmony with almost any northern berries, especially lingonberries. In general, let the seeker find it!