It’s that time of the year again.
It’s time to collect presents, meet some old friends and drink ourselves silly.
It’s Christmas.
Christmas is not just a date on the calendar. It has a certain vibe to it. Things can feel “Christmas-y”…and what’s more Christmas-y than booze with spice, orange and chocolate? It’s even better if you get it to share with friends and loved ones.
It’s not even that hard to make.
- Peels of 3 oranges
- 150g of Cocoa Nibs (if you can't get these, cooking chocolate works too)
- 700ml of Rye Whisky
- 150ml of simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water)
- Infuse the peels and cocoa nibs with the rye whisky for 2 weeks in a mason jar.
- Add the syrup and infuse for another 2 weeks.
- Filter and bottle.
Make sure to remove the bitter white pith from the orange peels to avoid an unpleasant bitterness creeping into the infusion. You can use a bourbon or Tennessee whiskey for the infusion as well, but rye is spicy and robust, which makes it a perfect fit for the season.
The really painful part of the whole process comes when doing the filtering. The cocoa/chocolate tends to cloud up the whole infusion, making it look like a murky, swampy suspension. It’s absolutely necessary to remove it, but it gets tricky because the chocolate breaks up into powder. The usual method of passing it through a coffee filter doesn’t work particularly well, because the powder clogs up the filters very quickly.
I found a three-step solution to my murky woes.
Firstly, I passed the bits through a simple strainer to remove the larger chunks of chocolate and the orange peel. Then, I boiled about 5g of clear Agar-Agar (roughly half a packet) in 150ml of water and let it cool.
Before it started to harden, I slowly poured in the infusion, stirring it all the while. After the jelly formed, I wrapped it in a cheesecloth and let it drip into a bowl, lightly squeezing it towards the end to release more liquid; I tried not to squeeze too hard to avoid getting a mouthful of agar-agar in the filtered booze, but I didn’t succeed completely.
The liquid was quite clear by now, but I decided to pass it through a coffee filter to remove any remaining powder. I didn’t quite get it all out, but I came pretty close.
Voila, from swamp-thing to drink-thing.
How does it taste?
Like Christmas, really. I’m looking forward to sharing it with those dear to me.
