Blueberry Vodka

Beautiful Blueberries!

I found berries on sale so I bought three punnets (I ate one).  Now I'll make some blueberry infused vodka because the strawberry vodka I made was a hit.

Here is what you need blueberries and vodka.  That's it.

I used 250 grams or about 8 oz of blueberries.

Wash your berries. 

Slice the berries or just puncture them.

Add them to a quart size clean mason jar. 

250 grams filled the jar about half way.

Fill the jar with vodka.

Don't they look lovely soaking in their alcohol bath?

Put a lid on the jar and give them a good shake.
Put in in the cupboard and every few days give it a shake.

Always label everything you jar!

This photo is taken after one hour and already the

berries are tinting the liquid.

This is 17 days later. 

This is with the sun light filtering through.

Looking down into the jar.  The colour is deep and bold. 

Separate the liquid from the berries. 

The berries are plump, full of liquid.  

The vodka first strained. 

Put the vodka back into your jar.

You can put it in a pretty jar if you're going to gift it.

These are what the berries look like after they've been soaking.

When I made strawberry vodka they looked similar and I just mushed them to get the remaining liquid out.

I tried mushing.

I tried squashing them between two spoons. 

It didn't work well.  They were much harder to squish than strawberries. 

So I crushed them with my hulk like hands. 

They didn't yield much fluid.

The fluid that came from the berries was opaque and not crisp looking like the vodka that was originally poured off.  I chose to keep this mashed liquid separate to keep the original jar looking good. 

I ended up with 600ml of lovely vodka and 60 ml of mashed vodka.

The light shining through my lovely blueberry infused vodka.  I can't wait to add some to my soda water.

Strawberry Vodka

A recent trip to Costco yielded a huge basket of strawberries so I decided to make a special treat for Christmas.  Strawberry vodka!

The basket wasn't really huge but the berries were.  Look at this monster!  The best part was that they were super sweet and juicy.

I washed the berries, trimmed the stems and cut some of them to fill a pint jar.  We aren't big drinkers in my house. There was a bottle of vodka in the freezer that must have been three years old.  I used what was left to cover the berries.

For two weeks they sat in my cupboard.  Every few days I'd give them a shake and watched as the vodka turn pink.   After two weeks the berries look like this.  Kinda gray and icky.  When I opened the jar it smelled just like jam.

I poured my berry mix through a strainer.  Look at the beautiful colour of the vodka. The berries were really plumped up.  They were full of my vodka so I had to get it out.

 I mashed the berries to extract as much liquid as possible.  Then poured it through a coffee filter into my jar.

The result!  I took this photo outside so you could see how bright the colours are.  It's really pretty, smells devine and tastes like candy.  I can't wait to mix it with a bit of sparkling soda and a squeeze of fresh lemon on Christmas day.