Alcoholic Christmas Gifts

[PTA]

Hi all,

I stumbled upon some lovely bottles in TK Maxx today and I want to make some flavoured spirits for Christmas presents. I made some Christmas Spiced Clemencello last year which went down quite well but I'd like to try something different this year.

Could I please have your best recipes for flavoured vodka/gin/anything drinkable please? And also when best to start making it. I don't want to make it too early but obviously need to do it early enough to be successful.

TIA

Christmas

Jeez.

It's still June here.

Is it not better the earlier you make it? My mil makes sloe gin and leaves it for years and it goes quite thick and syrupy our friends love it.

I made vodka lemoncello last year about this time. But this year I am cheating because I bought a bottle of Boozeberries for a party I was having but saved the bottle and the berries. I intend to top it up with vodka and sugar syrup and see what that's like.

I know, but it feels like winter here. :-(

I saw the bottles and couldn't resist so thought I'd get started. I've scanned the Christmas threads and couldn't find any alcoholic recipies although I did get some ideas for other foodie gifts.

Pardon my ignorance but what is sloe gin and where do you get sloes from Squirted?

I don't drink but I've just tasted the wee bit of vodka Clemencello that I had left and it is quite syrupy and tasty over six months one.

Sloe gin is just a liquer made from sloe berries. My mil scours the hedgerows for (I think - you'll have to google) hawthorn bushes. She knows were her local ones are. Well, she's in her seventies so many years practice! She collects the berries in autumn, pricks them at both ends and soaks them in gin. The cheapest gin, I might add. She then puts the bottle away in a cupboard labelled with the year. That's it. That's all she does, no sugar, nothing. She makes maybe three bottles every year, obv depending on the number of berries she collects. Bottles are filled 1/3 berries 2/3 gin. The bottles she uses are just ordinary spirit ones, empty vodka, whiskey that sort. When she comes to take them out of the cupboard she strains it into another bottle.

In our house we have a bottle of her 2002 vintage which is the latest release. You would not believe how much people rave about it.

Long time to wait for a Christmas pressie though! But she's been doing it so many years she always has a stock.

clicky me

Thanks Squirty and Random.

The thread you linked to is good. I could possibly do the Christmas Pudding Vodka but couldn't drink it myself as I loath cloves!

Does anyone have any more?

TIA

I started an experimental rhubarb and ginger vodka over the weekend. Some rhubarb was gone stringy but still smelled and tasted good, so I popped it in with a few pieces of stem ginger chopped up and some sugar, and covered the lot in voddie. The smell yesterday when I opened it after shaking was yuummmmmm, so that could be nice in a few months!!

I have rasperry vod, and chilli vod left from last year so won't need to do those. I am slowly going through the sloe gin myself, and hope FIL hasn't spread the word about their location (it's near their house - he told a guy in the pub about the damsons because I had said I would get some that weekend and the guy took them all 2 days before I got there last autumn!! I wouldn't mind if he actually was someone who'd use them).