Delicious homemade turne liqueurs – 3 recipes

No, it’s really delicious! Once you’ve tasted a well-made sloe liqueur, you won’t want to drink anything else again – at least not tonight. So we take a bigger bucket and set off to collect blackthorn – besides it, we only need sugar, vodka or alcohol and more patience.

Turn is one of the best autumn berries, although not very tasty in itself, but it is excellent for all kinds of jams and compotes for the winter and, of course, homemade alcohol. Almost any drink is excellent from it, except, perhaps, moonshine – fine wine, tinctures, there are even a number of national drinks, in the preparation of which blackthorn is used – for example, sloe gin or Spanish pacharan. But objectively, the liqueur from the turn is the best at home – its recipe is simpler than the recipe for wine, the drink comes out more saturated and less strong than the classic tincture.

Today we will immediately consider 3 options for sloe liqueur – the simplest, classic, more complex, with the addition of grapes, and “cahors”, with preliminary heat treatment of the sloe. Another proven version of half-filling-half-tincture is in the article about blackthorns. I’ll make a reservation right away – all recipes use vodka or diluted alcohol, at least a well-purified double distillate. Pouring from blackthorn without vodka is not a liqueur, but coarse wine (let’s stick to the correct terminology), if you have a lot of blackthorn, but it’s a pity for vodka, use the recipes from this article and make a normal wine using technology.

A simple homemade turne liqueur recipe

Simple, but, nevertheless, unrealistically tasty liqueur according to the classic “grandmother’s” technology. Such a drink is prepared for no longer than a month – otherwise, unnecessary compounds from the berry seed can pass into alcohol: amygdalin, hydrocyanic acid, and so on. Taking out the seeds is a dreary and difficult task, all the more so at the same time we will completely deprive the drink of its inherent almond flavor and will inevitably suppress the berries, which will make the liquor more difficult to filter.

How to make a thorn liqueur out of all this? Yes, it’s easier than ever! We take the berries, clean them with a cloth – not mine, as we need wild yeast. Weigh out half of the sugar. We put a layer of berries in a jar, on top – a layer of sugar, again a layer of berries and another layer of sugar – until the container is 2/3 full. Cover with cheesecloth and put in a warm place to start fermentation. If for some reason this did not happen after 3-4 days, wine yeast such as multiflora or, for example, raspberry sourdough, the recipe for which is in this article, will need to be added to the jar.

The whole thing should ferment under a water seal, for a relatively short time – from 4 to 8 days, it is not necessary to wait for the end of fermentation, it is enough that the berry softens as much as possible, and all the sugar dissolves. Now we take vodka (if you want a stronger drink, you can also use alcohol of 60 degrees) and fill the jar with it. Shake well, stir, if necessary, add vodka again to the very edges. We leave in a dark place. The time of infusion is 3 weeks, there is no point in waiting any longer. When this time has passed, we drain the liquid and filter it intensively through several layers of gauze, then through a cotton swab. We try. Little sweetness? Add sugar to taste, stir and bottle the drink. According to the recipe, sloe liqueur must be kept in the cellar for 2-3 months before use – it will be tastier.

Thorn-grape infusion on alcohol

Blackthorn and grapes are perfectly combined in alcohol. A handful of blackthorn per bottle of ordinary grape wine can make the taste of the drink more interesting and refined, brighten up the flaws of not very good grapes, add piquancy and a light almond note to the wine. In this recipe, the turn and the grapes are taken equally, 50:50, the grapes are suitable, of course, red, such as Isabella, alpha, in general – any “blue”.

Preparing a drink is more difficult than the previous one, but it will be more interesting and – importantly – there will be more of it.

1. We move the turn over with a rolling pin without separating the bone. Grapes are just sorted. We don’t wash anything – if necessary, just wipe it with a cloth.
2. From half the sugar and all the water we make a standard sugar syrup, cool it, pour the berries, packed in a container with a wide neck. We cover with gauze, put in a warm place and wait for the whole thing to ferment – this usually happens on the second or third day.
3. When the wort has fermented, we pour it into the bottle by a maximum of ¾ and install a water seal. In this case, you need to wait until the berries with sugar are completely fermented – it will take an average of 2 weeks.
4. If the water seal has not gurgled for a couple of days, we proceed to the next step. Carefully drain the fermented wort, put in another jar in a cool place. And the remaining cake is poured with alcohol to the top. He must insist – another 15 days.
5. After 2 weeks, drain the alcohol infusion, squeezing out the remnants of the berries, filter it. Pre-obtained blackthorn liquor without vodka, carefully, using a tube, drain from the sediment and combine with tincture.
6. The mixture should stand for at least 4 weeks – then it can be decanted again, if necessary and desired – carefully filtered and add sugar. It is advisable not to thump the whole kilogram into the drink at once, but add it gradually until the sweetness suits you – it should not be cloying.

Thorn liqueur prepared in this way at home should stand before tasting in bottles for at least a couple more weeks, better – a couple of months, after which it can be safely served at the table!

Blackthorn liqueur according to the “cagor” technology

Well, not exactly cahors, of course (the correct technology for preparing cahors is described in this article), but similar. We will need to thermally process the pulp, which will, firstly, make it easier to separate the juice from the berries, and secondly, “kill” the hydrocyanic acid found in the seeds, while retaining benzaldehyde, which is responsible for the “almondness” of the drink and other aromatic compounds.

Despite the fact that the preparatory stage – boiling the berries in syrup – will take you some time and effort, in general, this recipe for sloe liqueur is simpler than the previous one. Berries in this case do not pick up – there will be less problems with sediment and aging.

1. To begin with, the blackthorn needs to be sorted out. In this case, the berries finally need to be washed. We put them in a suitable saucepan, pour water, add sugar and turn on the fire. When the mass is almost boiled, we reduce the fire to a minimum, cook until all the sugar is dissolved, and the berries are wrinkled and burst. If desired, the same can be done in a slow cooker.
2. Pour the slightly cooled “compote” into a suitable bottle and fill it to the top with an alcohol base. Close the lid tightly and set aside in a dark place.
3. In this case, the liqueur can be aged longer than a month – 6-8 weeks, so that all aromatic and flavoring substances pass into alcohol.
4. After insisting, the turn must be squeezed out, the liquid filtered and “brought” the taste – add sugar, and if the product seems too strong – then a little water.
5. Now the liqueur needs to rest for another couple of weeks, after which it needs to be filtered again, if turbidity appears, and that’s it – you can taste it!

So we learned how to cook turne liqueur at home in three different ways – unlike each other, but always giving excellent results! Remember that any drink from the turn becomes much better with a long exposure – do not rush, and your patience will be rewarded a hundredfold!