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Rowan liqueur is the favorite recipe of the Russian nobility; in our family, not a single holiday can do without it. The recipe for traditional Russian ryabinovka came to me from my great-grandfather, who was a master at inventing legends.
Our whole family knows that we are all hereditary nobles, whose family comes from some prince. But no one remembers which one. But whether it really was – no one can say.
The story was shared by my subscriber Nikolai.
Why I decided to make alcohol myself
Every year in the fall, my grandfather took me with him for mountain ash, however, no one gave me a drink to try. Then I contrived and fraudulently entered the cellar in order to find out the taste of our mountain ash.
Needless to say, everyone laughed at me later, but I didn’t feel like laughing – it seemed that all my insides were burning, and most of all, of course, my throat.
Since then, my family has nicknamed me Emil, after the hero Astrid Lindgren, who drank cherry brandy as a child. This nickname is alive to this day, but now I not only try the liquor quite legally, but also cook it myself.
Today, almost any alcohol can be bought in a store, but in the old fashioned way I love my own, homemade. Only men prepare liquor in our family, this tradition has been preserved from our great-grandfather, and therefore making a drink is a whole ritual with its own sacred rite.
After the potatoes are dug up, when the rowan bushes are covered with the first frost, I am going to the forest. Fortunately, there are enough mountain ash in our places.
What ingredients are required
To prepare rowan liqueur you will need:
- rowan berries;
- sugar;
- water;
- vodka or moonshine.
The financial side is as follows: 1 kg of sugar costs from 37 rubles, a bottle of vodka on average from 250 rubles. In total, a bottle of 5 liters will cost me about 1 rubles 342 kopecks, of which 50 was spent on vodka, and 1 on sugar.
Proportions of ingredients: for 1 kg of berries – 0,5 kg of sugar, 0,5 liters of water and a bottle of vodka (0,5). Depending on the required amount of liqueur at the exit, I increase the amount of ingredients.
If water is excluded from the composition, the rowanberry will be more saturated in taste.
I do not advise excluding vodka or moonshine, because the mountain ash itself is not very prone to fermentation and, firstly, the loose version of the mountain ash will not surprise you with any special taste, and secondly, it will take quite a long time to wait for the product to be ready.
The cooking process
Cooking “rowanberry” I start with the preparation of berries. If the rowan was harvested before frost, then it is better to sort out the berry, wash it and place it in the freezer for three hours. So excessive bitterness will go out of the berries. I conditionally divide the entire cooking process into two parts:
- preparation of berries;
- syrup preparation.
I defrost the berries and put them on a baking sheet covered with parchment, then send them to the oven for 20 minutes. If your house has a real Russian oven, do not be lazy and bake berries right in it.
They should be baked until a bright aroma appears and juice is released. After removing the rowan from the oven, let it cool and then fill the jar with these berries.
In the photo, liqueur at the initial stage of preparation
Separately, I will say about the bank for infusing liquor. It should not be small in volume, since it must be filled in such a way that there is free space. It is not necessary to fill the contents of the jar to the brim.
Next, I prepare the syrup. To do this, I mix sugar and water and heat until completely dissolved, let it cool a little and pour berries over them.
Important! You can also prepare the liqueur without adding water, then it will turn out strong and viscous, like liquor. Water added to the drink makes it less strong and delicate in taste.
Lastly, I pour vodka or moonshine into a jar of berries, following the proportions written above. I close the jar with a lid and leave it for a month in a warm place.
What result did I get
After the designated time, I filter the resulting drink and pour it into containers for further use. I keep rowanberry in the basement, but if you don’t have one, a refrigerator will do.
As you can see, it is not difficult to prepare rowan tincture, and the result will surprise you with a fragrant smell and taste. You can keep it for as long as you like.
And to drink a glass of liquor after a bath is a sacred thing! Do you agree with me?