MxMo: Spice

It's Monday, and that means it's about time for the international drinkblogging community to showcase all the cool things we've been playing with. This month's Mixology Monday is being graciously hosted by Craig at Tiki Drinks & Indigo Firmaments (thanks!) and - topically, for Christmas - the theme is spice. Spices belong to that category of things you won't miss until they're not there. It's literally inconceivable to eat without salt and pepper on the table. Vanilla has become so prevalent as a flavour that the word can be used to describe things that are boring, unremarkable, and yet the general connotation of spices is of exoticism, of a faraway culture.

The problem I've always found when using spices in cocktails is that I tend to focus on one in particular, with the result that the drink ends up pretty one-dimensional. This time, I made a conscious decision to use a range of spices but I also realised that combining a number of ground spices, roots, barks and the like in a shaker would prove troublesome. In order to get around the problem, I made a bottle of Krupnik, a traditional Eastern European vodka liqueur, using some honey, cloves, cinnamon sticks, vanilla pods and nutmeg. Being honest, if I'd used red wine as a base and replaced the honey with a couple of orange wedges, I'd have ended up with mulled wine - the stuff tastes like Christmas in a bottle.

There was another problem, and this time there wasn't a lot I could about it. Christmas is crazy time in the bar industry, meaning 300 covers over the course of the day in the brasserie and 12 hour shifts representing an easy day. Saturday, for example, started at 10am and finished at 2am, with just about enough time to grab a Chinese takeaway and a coffee around 5pm. All of this made it tough to find the time to prototype drinks.

This isn't something I'd call a hardship. After all, I've always been a fan of making drinks that are a simple twist on an established cocktail. From what I know of David Embury's Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, he concludes that all cocktails can be traced back to six 'essential' cocktails, so I can claim I'm on decent theoretical ground. I played with a couple of ideas - a Krupnikito could have legs, I reckon - before deciding on a simple twist on a Cosmopolitan. Substituting the Cointreau for my Krupnik, I also opted to use some Zubrowka Bison Grass vodka with the aim on contrasting the mellow floral notes with the stronger spice flavours in the liqueur.

Stargazer

25ml Zubrowka Bison Grass Vodka
25ml Homemade Krupnik honey vodka liqueur
25ml Cranberry Juice
15ml Lemon Juice
1 dash Egg white

Shake all ingredients with ice and fine-strain into chilled martini glass. Garnish with an apple fan.

This recipe will work with commercially produced Krupnik, which has less of a spice hit than my homemade variety. If you're using it, garnish with some ground cinnamon and nutmeg; flame them over the drink for effect. I'd probably recommend using less lemon juice, too. The homemade Krupnik is almost syrupy sweet.

*** 

The name comes from the Polish tradition of keeping a vigil for the first star on Christmas Eve, the moment which marks the start of the traditional Christmas feast. It seemed appropriate, given I'd chosen to use two Eastern European products in the cocktail.

Thanks to Craig for hosting this month's MxMo; the fun continues over at TDIF!

24hr Project: Homemade Krupnik

Krupnik is one of those products that see in tons of bars, but keeps a low profile. It's got a really old school label, straight out of Eastern Europe - appropriately, it's hugely popular with Edinburgh's growing Polish community - but people only seem to know two things: a) it's vodka based, and b) it's honey flavoured. That's not even unhelpful.

It is a tasty product, though, and a recent article on money-saving Christmas gifts in the Guardian got me thinking.

Bottle some Krupnik

Give a bottle of home-made Christmas Krupnik. Henry Besant, founder of worldwidecocktailclub.com suggests this recipe. Buy a bottle of the best Polish vodka you can afford and pour the contents into a saucepan. Add 500ml of runny honey, 2 cinnamon sticks, 3 cloves, a teaspoon of grated nutmeg and an opened vanilla pod and heat gently until the honey is completely dissolved. Simmer for 20 minutes (but do not allow it to boil). Let the mixture cool and then strain it through muslin into a bottle of your choice. Decorate with ribbon and a cinnamon stick around the bottle neck, and add a tag with a serving suggestion, such as: "Serve with warmed cloudy apple juice and a dusting of nutmeg; add a dollop of double cream for a richer alternative."

Not only does this make a handy gift, it's just about perfect for the upcoming spice-themed MxMo. Coaxing the flavour from spices into room-temperature liquids can be troublesome, so getting that flavour extracted before kickoff could be awesome. Another bonus is the simplicity of the recipe - no macerating citrus peels for two weeks, people; instant results!

I opted for the above recipe, more or less verbatim. The thing I changed was the honey. In the end, I used three different varieties: acacia (light, floral), manuka (heavy, medicinal) and blossom (somewhere inbetween). The acacia honey keeps its liquidity naturally, so I picked a 'runny' pack of the blossom, leaving the heavier, more solid manuka to provide some bass. The other key ingredient was, of course, the vodka. I already had a bottle of Sobieski Vodka on a shelf thanks to an old colleague, and not being a prolific vodka drinker, it wasn't doing much.

Making the liqueur couldn't be easier. 

1. Pour vodka into a largish pan.
2. Heat gently and add the honey.
3. Add spices (3 sticks of cinnamon, 3 whole cloves, 1.5 barspoons ground nutmeg, 1 vanilla pod).
4. Simmer for 20 minutes - don't let it boil; we're not looking for another distillation.
5. Strain through muslin, bottle and stick it in the fridge.

There are things I'm disappointed in: the colour, for one. The blossom honey is pretty dark and combined with the manuka, it makes the whole thing look kinda murky. Still, it shows a lovely amber glow when you hold it up to the light and if I had any skills in clarifying liquids, I'm sure I could clean it up further. I'm also pretty sure that I put too much honey in the mix; the final liqueur is maybe just a shade too sweet for me.

On the plus side, it tastes phenomenal. The first thing that hits is the honey, with all the depth of flavour that comes from the different varieties. That's followed by a strong cinnamon finish, with a hint of cloves lingering around after. I think it might be the manuka, but this batch reminds me a lot more of Drambuie than it does of Krupnik. That's not a bad thing. Not bad at all.

Update: turns out my two concerns may have been related. After sitting for a couple of days, the liqueur separated, leaving a thick greyish-brown sediment at the bottom and a lovely, clear, amber liquid at the top. That suggests that I either saturated the mixture with the honey or didn't heat it thoroughly enough to dissolve all of it. Given the sweetness and that I didn't use the 500ml specified in the original recipe (I used nearly 350-400ml), I'm going with the former. It's still incredibly sweet, which isn't necessarily a problem, but it's looking way better.