Contents
“Hawthorn tincture” is a phrase familiar to everyone. Everyone associates it with different things: either with a grandmother who takes a spoonful or two of medicine “from the heart” every day, or with alcoholic experiments in her rogue student years, and most often with regional marginal alcoholics who use the potion with whole vials. But today we will not talk about a medicinal tincture, but about a delicious, noble drink with cheerful, relaxing and – a little bit – healing properties.
You can and even need to cook hawthorn tincture on vodka at home – well, I don’t trust all these pharmacy potions, and pharmacies in general. As Professor Preobrazhensky would put it: “God knows what they splashed there. Can you tell me what comes to their mind? And the hawthorn itself for tincture is also better to buy not pharmaceutical, but from grandmothers in the market. In general, no matter what you want to get – a medicinal extract or an alcoholic drink – it’s better to get confused and make it yourself. Today we will talk about how to use hawthorn in homemade tinctures in various ways.
Useful and harmful properties of hawthorn tincture
Hawthorn is probably one of the most useful fruits that grow wild in our latitudes. Healing substances in it – darkness! Pectin and tannins, now popular flavonoids, which exterminate free radicals – the culprits of aging and oncology (as it is believed), a bunch of trace elements and vitamins, including useful ones in combination with alcohol C and PP.
Before preparing hawthorn tincture on vodka, you need to choose the right berry itself. The fact is that there are more than a thousand species of this plant, in the expanses of the former USSR – about 30. Each species has its own taste, aromatic and biologically active properties.
In order not to be sprayed, today we will discuss only recipes for alcohol tinctures of blood-red hawthorn – the very one that is used in pharmacology. But this does not mean that green, yellow or brown-black berries cannot be used – you can, only the recipe will need to be adjusted “for yourself”. Fortunately, unlike, for example, juniper, poisonous species of hawthorn do not exist.
Hawthorn tincture helps with:
- stresses of various forms and configurations (as, indeed, all delicious homemade booze);
- overexertion of the mind and body (again);
- insomnia (hawthorn has a good sedative effect);
- neurosis (not only eliminates the consequences of neurotic reactions, but also helps to minimize them);
- VSD, diagnosed in 70% of urban residents – in the cardiological and hypertonic (but not hypotonic!) form;
- violations of heart rhythms, arrhythmias, partially – tachycardia;
- fluctuations in blood pressure – “puts in place” your blood pressure, counteracting further sharp jumps;
- increased risk of heart attacks and other heart problems – for example, in adulthood and with a number of specific diseases;
- surprise! – chronic herpes.
So, the answer to the question “is it possible to drink?”. If you have high blood pressure, poor sleep, VVD – hawthorn tinctures on moonshine according to the recipes below can be consumed in reasonable quantities – it will only get better (they say that such alcohol in hypertensive patients has a much easier hangover than from ordinary booze). You can also pour 20 grams of this mixture to your favorite old aunt at dinner.
But if the “motor” is fooling around or you have been diagnosed with any CCC disease – drink only after consulting a doctor!
Moonshine on hawthorn – a recipe for a simple “drinking” tincture
The hawthorn berry itself has a rather weak taste and smell, therefore, to make the product more pleasant to drink, the fruits of this plant are combined with other ingredients. For example, in this recipe – with a standard “tincture” set: honey, cinnamon and vanilla. For a liter jar of tincture we need:
- 800 g of moonshine or alcohol 50%
- 1 cup dried hawthorn berries
- 1 small cinnamon stick
- a whisper of vanillin or 4-5 g of vanilla sugar
- 1 art. l. fragrant honey
Preparing the tincture is extremely simple. Berries need to be poured into a jar, add cinnamon and insist for at least 3 weeks – ideally until the fruits give the drink all the color, and they themselves become barely yellow. After that, you need to thoroughly filter the tincture through cheesecloth, squeeze out the pulp and once again pass it through a cotton filter. Next – slightly warm the honey, mix it with vanilla sugar and pour into the tincture. Stir well and let it rest for another week – during this time, sediment (wax and other impurities from honey) will definitely fall to the bottom of the bottle, so the hawthorn tincture for alcohol will need to be driven through the cotton wool again. Everyone can drink!
A beautiful old legend explains the origin of the name hawthorn like this. Say, there once lived a noblewoman. But not like all the boyars, but affectionate, sympathetic and who knew the secrets of herbalism (oh, this peasant faith in a good owner!).
She helped, it means, to her poor serfs: for some – with a decoction, for some – with tincture, for some – with a cherished word. And when the time came for the boyar to die, the grateful peasants went to the forest witch and asked for eternal life for the mistress. And she took and turned it into a plant that gives fruits, healing from all ailments. The thorny bush was called “hawthorn”. This is how you help people.
Vodka tincture: hawthorn with wild rose and galangal
The combination of hawthorn and wild rose is a classic! Rosehip will give the drink a slight sourness and make the taste more complete, enhance the healing properties and improve the color of the drink. And galangal will give a slight sharpness, characteristic of bitter tinctures, and a certain “woody”, “cognac” flavor. The recipe was developed and tested by a Ukrainian moonshiner, known online under the nickname Alkofan. For half a liter of vodka we will need:
- 500 ml of vodka / alcohol / moonshine 40-50%
- 1,5 st. l. dried hawthorn
- 1 st. l. dried wild rose
- 1/2 tsp chopped galangal or 2-3 cuts of 3 mm fresh
- 1 st. l. sugar and water for syrup
This tincture is also easy to prepare. Dried berries and galangal should be thrown into a jar, poured with vodka and kept for 3 weeks – a month in a dark, warm place, shaking occasionally. At the end of this period, drain and strain the liquid, squeeze the berries with gauze. Make a standard syrup of equal parts sugar and water, sweeten the tincture with it, and let it rest for a few more days. Done, you can taste!
Bitter tincture “Erofeich” with hawthorn
“Erofeich” – a drink that has nothing to do with Venedikt Erofeev, does not even have a single exact recipe. In the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries, the Russian district nobility became infatuated with the preparation of home-made moonshine – then the “state-owned” vodka was of very poor quality (however, as it is now). The taste of the distillate needed to be improved – and a variety of herbs, roots, berries and spices available in a particular region were used, giving rise to hundreds of interesting versions of this bitter tincture.
In the relevant material, you will find as many as 10 recipes for various “erofeiches”, and today – a recipe for tincture with hawthorn on moonshine from a certain Andrey Lazarev. According to the author, the drink is a 100% replica of the Soviet “Erofeich”, which at one time was mass-produced by the alcoholic beverage industry.
I must say right away that there are a lot of ingredients here, and not all of them are widely available. But in our business, experiment is an important and sometimes inevitable thing. Therefore, we take what we have, and use the recipe only for advisory and informational purposes.
- 1 liter of quality moonshine 50%
- 5 g hawthorn berries
- 5 g dried St. John’s wort
- 5 g dried peppermint
- 5 g dried lemon balm
- 5 g dried oregano
- 2,5 g of dried thyme
- 2,5 g dried sweet clover
- 2,5 g dried marjoram
- 2,5 g dried bitter wormwood
- 2,5 g dried yarrow
- 2,5 g dried spring primrose (white caps)
- 1,25 g cardamom seeds
- 1,25 g anise seeds (not star anise!)
By the way, about the spring primrose. So they can call the first spring flowers of different plants. I will give the whole list (it hurts too funny):
… rams, lambs, white, yellow, green initial letter, twirls, firstborn, jaundice, yellow liferia, ice cap, nikolayki, blueberry companion, magpie legs, flight, God’s hands, heavenly keys.
“Arguments and Facts”
Preparing this vodka tincture with hawthorn is easy, especially if you have a good kitchen scale. All the ingredients are poured into a jar, poured with moonshine or sorted with the appropriate strength and poured with vodka, shaken well and sent for a week to a dark place. After infusion, the liquid is filtered through gauze and cotton wool. If necessary, it can be slightly sweetened (no more than a teaspoon of sugar per liter of drink). Let it rest for a couple more days – and you will be able to taste what all sorts of Sheremetyevs, Morozovs, Koshkins and other Troekurovs drank in their time.
Drink with pleasure, do not be zealous, and you will be healthy!