Honestly, I was – and still am – rather befuddled as to what to get my friends for Christmas this year.? Thus, I’m still behind on giving most of them gifts.

Damn.

Marshall had, in fact, given me a bottle of spiced pumpkin liqueur.? For some reason that got me feverishly thinking and I announced to my roommates “I’m going to make Marshall gin for Christmas!”

My brother – the criminal defense attorney – was not amused at that statement until I pointed out that it would be an infused gin, not a distilled one.

You see, someone had shown me a recipe in Gourmet for “kitchen gin” and I’d decided to make that.? I wandered over to Penzey’s, bought some spices and herbs and what-have-you, then hit the ABC store over near West Falls Church and got a bought of vodka that I bought as much for the bottle itself as anything else.

Then something hit me (ow!).? Did I have to use vodka?? What if I used a different base…like unaged corn whiskey?

Giggling, I set about getting everything together.

Once that was done, I wrote down the recipe.? Okay, we’re starting off with just the juniper berries over night, aren’t we?? That’s fine.

Two tablespoons of juniper berries went into each bottle.? Well, they went into the Georgia Moon bottle – that was an easy bottle to use for your infusing needs!

The 360 vodka bottle, on the other hand, was a little more annoying, so I ended up having to use a different container for infusing.? Not a huge deal.

That infused over night.? The next morning I got up and went to add the rest of the botanicals, etc., to infuse while I was at work.? Of course I was running late for work, and thus forgot to take pictures, and I made a huge mess through my kitchen because I hadn’t had any caffeine yet.

But, none the less, I got it done.

When I got back I had that kind of wondering feeling – I’d used ground allspice, since that’s all I’d found, and should I have used whole allspice berries?? Unfortunately, it was too late to go back, and after filtering it – and being out of cheesecloth and coffee filters dammit – there was still some allspice in the bottom of the bottles.? I hoped it wouldn’t hurt it too much and packaged it up.

It’s definitely cloudy but I was warned that it would be that way.? I smelled it and, well, it smelled like gin.? As I had kind of hoped, the whiskey one smelled a bit like genever gin, so I was eager to see how that turned out.

How did it taste?

Well, I can’t rightly tell ya.? We were going to taste it New Year’s Eve but didn’t get around to it.? So maybe Marshall will follow up and say if he has tasted it yet.

If it sucks – hey, whatever.? Could’ve been worse.

My parents gave me my presents this year a bit later.? I’d asked for an iSi soda siphon and instead they gave me a SodaStream after doing some research online.

The SodaStream works by carbonating clean, cold water – and that’s it.? You can pick how carbonated it is by pushing a button on top.? After it’s carbonated (in the provided 1 liter bottles) you add concentrate to make it flavored.? Included was a sample pack of flavors – I found most of them pretty darn close, and pretty tasty, to their equivalents.? I will probably buy more of their diet cola and energy drink versions.

They make a tonic water but it didn’t come with that, so my big complaint is this: to buy it in a store, I have to go to freaking SPRINGFIELD to some store I’d never heard of before (Boater’s World?!) to buy it!? Even though Williams Sonoma (of which there are a GAZILLION near me in places I’d rather go than SPRINGFIELD) carries the CO2 tanks, they don’t carry the mix!

STU-PID.

I’ll probably just end up ordering some cichona bark online and making my own tonic syrup starting with Jeffrey Morgenthaler‘s recipe.? I’m going to end up a member of the Cult of Morgenthaler or something.

Of course, researching that today got me looking into making some of Jamie Boudreau‘s amer picon recipe, too…