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Sometime in early Fall of 2008 I was at a party at our friend Roy’s house.? Roy has a nice bar set-up in the garage and that tends to be the hang-out spot for the men-folk during shindigs.? So I’m at this party, Sean and I are behind the bar making drinks, and Roy tells us that he bought some pumpkin liqueur for his wife.? His wife loves pumpkin and he tasked us with making a drink for her.? Well, I’m guessing that a majority of you good cocktail drinking folks out there know what kind of pumpkin liqueur can be found at your basic liquor store.? Yep, nothing good.? I tried making a few drinks, but everything came out tasting fake.? Just weirdly fake flavors due to the liqueur.

At the end of the night, Roy laid down a challenge.? To come with with pumpkin cocktails that his wife would enjoy.? That challenge got me to thinking about making my own, homemade pumpkin liqueur.? Better yet, I could make a big ole batch and give away as Christmas gifts.

I began my research in how to go about making pumpkin liqueur.? As the fates would have it, during the October “Made From Scratch” Mixology Monday, Craig Hermann of Tiki Drinks & Indigo Firmaments wrote about his own homemade pumpkin liqueur!? Just how fortuitous is that?!?!? So after a few false starts and a purchase of bottles from Specialty Bottle, I was ready to start my pumpkin liqueur.? The recipe below is for a single batch that gives you about half a gallon of liqueur.

Spiced Pumpkin Liqueur
2 Cups of Pumpkin, cubed and roasted
.5 Cup of Ginger, sliced
.5 Cup Allspice Berries, crushed
.25 Cup Cloves, crushed
1 Nutmeg, Ground
4 Sticks Cinnamon, broken
1 Tbls Cinnamon, ground
1 Tbls Mace, ground
2 Pods Vanilla, scraped
750ml Lemonhart 151
8 cups sugar for syrup

First, peel, cube and roast your pumpkin.

Then divide your pumpkin and spices into two equal piles.

Put your first half of the pumpkin and spices in a container and pour your bottle of Lemonhart 151 over to infuse.? You will infuse this for at least a week.? I recommend stirring or shaking this once a day every day.? At the end of your infusion time (for me it was a week exactly) strain the solids and filter the infused 151.

Take the second half of pumpkin and spices and place in a pot with the 8 cups of sugar.? Add 4 cups of water and bring to a boil.? Just when the mixture comes to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes.? After the simmering is complete, transfer everything in the pot to another container and let infuse for at least a week.? I infused my syrup for exactly a week.? After your infusion time, strain out the solids and filter the best you can.? A word of warning though – this stuff is thick and sticky.? I used cheesecloth and coffee filters and it took about 4 hours to filter it all.? Time consuming, but well worth it.

Finally, take your infused rum and infused syrup and mix the two together.? Bottle and use.? The resulting liqueur is very sweet and packs a nice rummy punch from the Lemonhart.? The spices are also very in your face.? In my recent champagne post, I included the following recipe which used the pumpkin liqueur to great effect.

A Sweet Ending
2oz Amber rum
1oz Spiced Pumpkin Liqueur
Dry/Brut Champagne/Cava

-Shake the rum and liqueur with ice and strain into a chilled champagne flute.? Top of dry/brut sparking wine of your choice.

There you have it – Spiced Pumpkin Liqueur.? Many thanks to Craig for posting his recipe!? Oh and did Roy’s wife enjoy the gift of pumpkin liqueur.? I’m happy to report that she had two helpings during New Year’s Eve and reported that she thought it was wonderful.? I’d call that a win!

Have you made your own liqueurs?? Have a good pumpkin recipe?? If so, share your experiences and recipes in the comments section!

Cheers!

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…

I just wanted to take a moment to wish all of our friends out there a very happy and safe holiday. May your cups be full and your hangovers be naught!

Cheers!

Okay, it’s been a week – I know.? We met up with the one and only Kaiser Penguin last Friday and headed out to the Repeal Day Ball.? Washingtonian has some coverage of it over here, and we got to run into a lot of people that we know and got to meet all kinds of new people as well, including LeNell Smothers, Tony Abou-Ganim and Jeffrey Morgenthaler.

(I tried to think up something witty to say there but alas, it was not to be.? What I will say is that I made his eggnog recipe the other day and it was damn delicious.? Of course, I also saw his coverage of Repeal Day and man, I need to learn how to pose for the camera like he’s learned so well to do…)

But enough about that.? If you missed it, you missed out, ha ha!? It was quite possibly the most fun party I’ve ever had in DC.

Back on topic.? Earlier this week I was logging in to work where my browser, be default, goes to www.msn.com for whatever reason (possible reasons: I’m too lazy to change it, it is IE after all, PopCap.com would be too obvious).? There they had a link to “95 Chic Cocktail Recipes for the Holidays”.? Me being me, I felt compelled, after viewing a few of them, to go through and comment on EACH AND EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM just for you, our loyal readers.

And because I’m such a nice guy, I’ll put it after the cut.