Cranberry – cranberry tincture. Cranberries on alcohol, vodka, moonshine.

If for wines the season has passed, then for tinctures it is just beginning. And it doesn’t matter what kind of tincture it will be from, from a set of spices for Becherovka, lemon zest for Limoncello, or frozen berries. Therefore, I decided to make this winter the season of tinctures and tell you a whole million recipes for delicious tinctures, liqueurs, liqueurs and more. And we will start this season with cranberry tincture, the recipes of which will be several.

Speaking of frozen berries – for tinctures, that’s it. The fact is that freezing loosens the structure of the fruit, so the juice separates much better. That is why before preparing any tinctures, the berries should be frozen. Cranberries even be sure to hold in the freezer for more than 24 hours – so it will become less bitter. So what about cranberries?

Cranberries are generally one of the most successful berries for making tinctures. It ripens in September, but easily tolerates frost and can retain its original appearance until spring. It can also be stored fresh in barrels filled with water – this way it is stored until the next harvest. Cranberries grow in damp places throughout almost the entire northern part of Russia, in particular in the Urals, Siberia and the Far East. The berries are quite large and reach 1,6 cm in diameter.

From the point of view of medicine, cranberry is an amazing berry; in Russia it was called the “northern lemon”. It contains a huge amount of citric and quinine acid, the fruits are rich in vitamins C, B1, B2, B5, B6, PP and the rarer vitamin K1, in which they are not inferior to cabbage and strawberries. For medicinal purposes, cranberry is used as an antipyretic, diuretic and bactericidal agent. [wiki article].

For tinctures, you can take any berry, but it is desirable that it be ripe and not spoiled. So, I offer you the first recipe for cranberry tincture (in the common people “cranberry”) on vodka, as the simplest and most affordable.

Traditional cranberry vodka recipe

To prepare 0,55 l of drink:

• 250 g cranberries (1 cup);
• 0,5 l of good vodka (moonshine or alcohol with a strength of 40-45%);
• 1 tbsp sugar (to taste);
• 50 ml water (optional).

Cooking “cranberries” like this:

1. We sort out the berries, get rid of the spoiled ones, wash them and pour them into a liter jar.
2. Pound the cranberries with a wooden masher / muddler until a homogeneous gruel is obtained.
3. Fill with vodka and mix well, close the jar and send for 2 weeks in a dark, warm place.
4. We filter the tincture several times through four layers of gauze, and then through a cotton filter.
5. We take a sample, and if everything suits, then leave it as it is. If the drink seemed sour, add the syrup:

• Add a tablespoon of sugar to 50 ml of water and heat until it is completely dissolved.
• cool the syrup and add it to the tincture, wait another day and taste it.

You need to store the drink in the refrigerator or basement. Of course, the resulting cranberry tincture must be given time to settle, and the longer the better. Every day its taste will become more rounded, whole, bright cranberry tones will appear. The tincture itself has an excellent color that resembles the color of cranberry juice. You should drink the drink carefully – you don’t feel the degree at all, but you can get drunk quickly 🙂

Recipe for cranberries in alcohol

Here everything is a little more complicated and you have to tinker a lot. As it is right in all recipes, cranberries need to be crushed, but because of this, the initial infusion turns out to be very cloudy. To avoid this, you can not crush the berries, but make several holes in each of them with a needle. This process is dreary, but if you tie 3-4 needles together, then things will go faster, especially if you connect your wife =). But you can do without it – over time, the cranberry tincture clarifies itself, and reusable filtration through gauze bandage also helps.

Ingredients:

• 2 liters of alcohol, 45% strength;
• 350-400 g cranberries;
• 3 art. spoons of sugar (optional)

Preparation:

1. Mash cranberries with a wooden crusher; if the berries were collected by ourselves, then we add 3 tbsp to the berry. tablespoons of sugar, cover with a lid and send for a day or two in a warm place until it ferments.
2. In any case, even if you haven’t fermented, pour crushed berries with 1 liter of alcohol (we dilute it to 45% using our calculator), close it and put it in a warm place for 2 weeks.
3. After two weeks, drain the infusion and pour another 1 liter of alcohol, keep it for a week.
4. Drain the second infusion and mix with the first, filter through several layers of gauze and cotton wool; in the infusion is not necessary, but it is desirable to add:

• a teaspoon of crushed galangal root (you can read about it here);
• zest of one lemon;
• 2 tbsp. l. honey;
• sugar, and preferably fructose, and preferably sugar syrup to taste (for an amateur).

5. Insist after that for another 7-10 days, filter several times through gauze-cotton-paper filters; leave the cranberry tincture to rest.

As practice shows, this version of the tincture will lighten itself in 2-3 weeks, and then it can be safely filtered through cotton wool or a paper filter. Of course, the longer the drink stands, the tastier it will turn out.

If you are a fan of sweet tinctures of this kind, then I advise you to pour 1 kg of crushed cranberries for the first time with 0,5 liters of pure alcohol, after 5 days drain and pour another 0,5 liters for 3 days. Drain, pour 1 liter of water, mix and add to both infusions, which must also be mixed together. To get a 30-degree tincture with 20% sugar, you need to add a syrup of 600 ml of sugar to the resulting infusion, so add this amount of sugar to 1 liter of water after rinsing the berries, boil the syrup, pour it into the infusion and bring the total volume of the drink to 3 l.

Academician Nesmeyanov’s Klyukovka is the first!

This recipe, according to legend, was invented by the famous organic chemist, the legend of Moscow University, Academician A.N. Nesmeyanov. According to the same legend, the first cranberry vodka was called “nesmeyanovka” – a favorite delicacy of natural scientists (physicists, chemists, biochemists, biologists, soil scientists, etc.). Initially, “non-mixing” was prepared in the laboratory using a centrifuge, a magnetic stirrer, and a homogenizer. Fortunately, everything is much more prosaic.

Ingredients:

• 1 glass of cranberries;
• 1 glass of pure alcohol;
• 1 cup of sugar.

Preparation:

Grind cranberries with sugar and pour medical alcohol, leave for a week. Squeeze through gauze. If you don’t like sweets, less sugar. This version of the tincture was appreciated by hundreds, and maybe thousands of doctors. There is another recipe belonging to the commander of the Great Patriotic War Ivan Konev, who, according to him, Nesmeyanov himself told him. The recipe is a quick one.

1. Rinse 500-700 g of cranberries, scald with boiling water and knead (preferably with your hands).
2. The resulting mass in a liter jar and pour 0,5 liters of good vodka or pure alcohol.
3. Add the juice of one lemon and 1-1,5 tbsp. spoons of sugar (preferably fructose with sweetness conversion).
4. Infuse the drink at room temperature for 2-3 days, then squeeze through gauze and filter through a sieve. Keep refrigerated.

Use it to your health, and let your cranberry tincture turn out to be the most delicious in the world. By the way, almost any cranberry recipe allows you to make a drink that is very close in spirit to Finlandia cranberry vodka, and, as you know, it is not the cheapest. You can drink cranberry tincture in its pure form, or you can drink it with cranberry juice – very tasty. And you can also cook the legendary Cosmopolitan cocktail on it. By the way, in the West, for some reason, cranberry vodka is considered a Christmas drink.