Pomegranate tincture with vodka and alcohol

Pomegranate is a very useful fruit. It contains about 15 amino acids, five of which are essential. In addition, the fruits contain many vitamins K, C, B9 and B6, as well as minerals: potassium, copper and phosphorus. Pomegranates also contain a rich supply of punicalagin, a substance that has a very beneficial effect on the heart muscle, lowers cholesterol and prevents the formation of atherosclerotic plaques. In general, if you regularly use the gifts of the East, then the heart will work like a clock for a very long time.

In principle, garlic tincture has the same effect, but pomegranate is much more pleasant to eat, and even more pleasant to drink it. Preparing pomegranate tincture is very simple, the only thing is that you will have to spend money on purchasing an expensive overseas delicacy today (especially when you consider that 3 to 6 pomegranates are required for one serving of such tincture). By the way, the version on alcohol has another alternative name – “Kremlin Stars”. It’s easy to guess why the tincture on the pomegranate is called that, the Kremlin leaders always took care of their health (although not everyone lived to a ripe old age, that’s the job).

Every year on October 26, the Day of the Pomegranate is celebrated in Azerbaijan. It is for this festival that the harvesting of fruits ends, and the country celebrates this bright event. Fairs and exhibitions are held in the cities, and people brag about their harvest, including various pomegranate-based goodies: juices, wines, jams, etc.

According to the first recipe, you can make a delicious liquor, not a tincture, but if you don’t like sweets, then just don’t add sugar and you will get almost authentic “Kremlin Stars”. In the second recipe, we will prepare an alcohol tincture, no less tasty, but you should drink it 2-3 months after preparation, otherwise it will deteriorate – the taste and “aroma” of alcohol will return. The technology of preparation is similar to the preparation of cranberry tincture.

pomegranate vodka liqueur

Notes on tools and ingredients:

• Where possible, avoid plastic when handling alcohol. Glass is always preferred.
• An ordinary three-liter jar is best suited for infusion;
• Pomegranate juice can also be used in place of pomegranate fruit, but seeds with pits are preferred as they add extra depth to the drink.
• This recipe uses white sugar, not any other. Unrefined and unprocessed sugar can lead to the most unpredictable results. Use only white sugar.
• In addition to cinnamon, cloves and anise can be added to the liquor, but the author of this recipe prefers fruity aromas and flavors rather than spicy ones.
• Instead of vodka, you can use high-quality, diluted double-distilled sugar moonshine with intermediate charcoal cleaning.

Step 1. Cleaning the pomegranate.

There are several ways to get pomegranate seeds, but the easiest way to do this is with water. To do this, you need to cut the pomegranate into two halves lengthwise and place it in a large bowl of water. Then you need to take it by the edges, turning the cut part down, and press on the center with your fingers to turn half of the fruit inside out. Sometimes this does not work, but in any case it is very convenient to extract grains in water: the juice does not splash, and the membrane and pomegranate peel float up, while the grains settle down.

You can also use another culinary life hack. For this you need a wooden spoon. It is necessary to make incisions along the perimeter of the fetus and break it into two parts with your hands. Place half a pomegranate in the palm of your hand, grain side down, and tap with a wooden spoon. The seeds will fall out in 10 seconds, after which it remains only to extract units in the farthest corners of the biblical fruit (the pomegranate is mentioned in the Bible as a symbol of the versatility of the universe).

Step 2. Crushing grains and extracting juice.

To make our pomegranate liqueur liqueur, you need to extract juice from the grains. To do this, pomegranate seeds need to be put in a large sieve with a metal mesh and mashed well with a spoon, carefully crushing each grain so that juice flows out of it (of course, you need to place a collection container under the sieve, a plate, for example).

You can do it easier and crush all the grains with a rolling pin directly in the bank, but then you can skip some of them. We do not throw away the seeds themselves – we only need to destroy the membrane with the juice, and we still need the seeds in the tincture.

Step 3. Cleaning the lemon, insisting.

Further, everything is much simpler: it is easy to cut the lemon zest with a potato peeler (as we did when we prepared Limoncello liqueur). It is important not to touch the white skin, which will give the drink bitterness. Next, crushed pomegranate seeds and lemon zest should be placed in a three-liter jar and pour vodka, not forgetting to add a cinnamon stick there. The jar should first be doused with boiling water or held over steam to disinfect it – a precaution here will not be superfluous.

The jar should be tightly closed and sent to a dark, cool place for 2-3 weeks. Every day, the contents of the jar should be shaken slightly so that the infusion is more intense.

Step 4. Filtering the tincture, preparing the syrup.

After 2-3 weeks, pomegranate tincture must be filtered through several layers of gauze, carefully squeezing out the entire infusion without residue. You can get rid of the solid part of the infusion for good, the liquid should be returned to the jar.

After that, you should cook a simple syrup:

• pour water into a saucepan and add sugar there;
• very carefully heat the contents, stirring constantly;
• do not heat the water too much so that the sugar does not burn and caramelize;
• stir the syrup until the sugar is completely dissolved;
• let it cool completely and add to our tincture.

After mixing pomegranate tincture with syrup, it must be removed again in a cool place for 2-3 weeks, and preferably immediately for 4-5, while it can sometimes be shaken so that the sugar is completely dissolved.

Step 5. Bottling.

During settling, a precipitate should form at the bottom of the jar – you need to get rid of it. To do this, you can scoop out the liquor with a small cup, as in the photo, without touching the sediment, or you can remove the drink from the sediment with a small rubber hose. Here’s what’s more convenient for you. The liquor removed from the sediment can be bottled, which also does not hurt to be sterilized first – do not forget that we are dealing with fresh juices here. Sterilization will be very relevant if you are making liquor for a gift or, say, you are going to store it for a long time.

It is better to drink this liquor chilled, clean, from liqueur glasses. You can also mix 50/50 with vodka – you should definitely like this cocktail. Liquor goes well with cranberry juice. For the holidays, you can add 30 ml of our homemade drink to a glass of champagne – no worse than the classic Bellini.

Recipe for pomegranate tincture on alcohol “Kremlin Stars”

Wine is not an obligatory ingredient here, but if you decide to add it, then it is better to take your own, homemade, or even dessert wine, to even out the taste of the tincture.

Preparation:

We do everything by analogy with the previous recipe: we extract the grains, squeeze out the juice, grinding them in an iron saucepan with a spoon. We do not need bones this time – they are in the trash. First, mix alcohol with mineral water, then add pomegranate juice and wine. We insist in a dark, cool place for 2-3 weeks, after which we filter through gauze, you can drive it through a cotton filter.

The resulting infusion after filtration would be good to leave alone for another week, but the learned pomegranate The tincture is best consumed within 2-3 months., because over time, the taste and aroma of the pomegranate will fade and alcohol will begin to dominate.

By the way, the peel of the pomegranate fruit can be used as a remedy for diarrhea – for this it is enough to brew them like tea. You can also make an aqueous infusion of pomegranate peels, but this, as they say, is a completely different story, not entirely suitable for our “not for children” site.