Today I hosted a small get together for a few Portland area bloggers. It was a bit of a leap of faith for all of us as we had never met, and they came over to my home. Luckily, we are all still alive to tell the tale. And fortunately I believe a good time was had by all. A few fun cocktails were flowing, and eventually we got out a stack of spoons for everyone to start taste-testing (I think they may have tasted a few dozen…)
So, a big thank you to Evelyn from Momsicle, Poppy from Funny or Snot, and Krista from Mostly Mommyhood.
Eventually, I will post about our cocktails (and they might too…) so stay tuned. In the meantime, I wanted to share the infusion that was the base of our featured cocktail from today’s gathering.
Blueberry Gin
2 c. Gin
2 c. frozen blueberries
1/4 c. sugar
zest of 1 lemon
2 whole cloves
1/2 inch piece of a cinnamon stick
Place the frozen blueberries in a small saucepan. Crush them lightly (I used a pastry cutter). Lightly cook them on low for about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool completely. This amounted to about 1 cup of a gelatinous blueberry goop.
After the blueberries are cool, place all ingredients in a quart jar (or larger). Shake and allow to infuse for at least 4 weeks, stirring or shaking occasionally.When it has reached your desired taste, Strain and Filter through a colander, cheesecloth, jelly bag, and coffee filter.
I got some of the inspiration for this liqueur from Post Prohibition. He recommends using frozen berries because of the organic breakdown of frozen fruit (or something like that… I was willing to give it a try) and also lightly cooking the berries.
The flavor came out great. I really love blueberry pie, so the intent was to include a few spices that you might find in a blueberry pie.
It is delicious! I have not yet tried making a blueberry liqueur with fresh berries, but have had a few blueberry infusions that tasted quite weak. I wanted to make sure we didn’t fall into that trap. The result was great.
Cheers!
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May 6, 2012 at 10:36 pm
We’re all alive! Although it’s hard to imagine you killing us with anything other than alcohol poisoning. And that would really be on us, right? But you win the Brave Blogger of Spring award for having slightly off-kilter mothers over to your house for drinking. And since none of us wrote posts while drunk, I think your home address is safe. Although I did steal your credit cards… Seriously, though, your infused liqueurs closet is STUNNING! THANK YOU for the peek.
May 7, 2012 at 7:27 am
thanks! And a big thank you to YOU for helping pull this off
May 7, 2012 at 2:57 am
That looks amazing! Must try it out.
May 7, 2012 at 7:28 am
thanks. This was the first time I had tried frozen fruit, and I really liked the result.
May 7, 2012 at 10:52 am
I don’t know how you have the willpower to actually cook your blueberries–I usually eat all of mine on the six block walk home from the farmer’s market! Of course, that makes me think I would really love this infusion as well…maybe I should just buy triple the blueberries to ensure that some would make it home intact. 🙂
May 7, 2012 at 5:05 pm
ha ha! Yes, you should definitely buy extra berries. I happened to receive so many berries last year (it sure is nice to know people who grow them…) that I still had a bunch in the freezer. This year I planted a few blueberry bushes of my own
May 8, 2012 at 9:09 pm
I really really really (insanely) want to do this. I can feeeeeel the flavor profile in my mouth (jk, there were just too many re-runs of Top Chef on recently). But – i am kind of lazy and wish I didn’t have to do any saucepan-ning (terrible, I know)…
May 8, 2012 at 9:25 pm
You could try it without the saucepan, but you may bot be as happy with the result. I had tried other blueberry infusions that were good, but not AS good. So, it is up to you. You really don’t have to cook them that long… If that helps.
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May 19, 2012 at 5:13 am
This sounds really good! I pinned it to try later. Thanks!
May 19, 2012 at 8:11 am
i hope you do try it! (and hope you enjoy… It is hard not to!)
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June 12, 2012 at 2:22 am
Glad you liked my Sour Cherry Brandy recipe. I also make Blueberry brandy but I have never cooked the berries. May try that this year and will try your Blueberry Gin. Lovely site and great recipes!
June 14, 2012 at 4:14 am
Hi, Alicia. I wrote about Blueberry Gin and Boozed + Infused on atasteofmorning.com this morning. I hope that you like the post!
June 14, 2012 at 5:58 pm
Thanks Laurie, your photo is beautiful as always! (All the infused gins make incredible gin and tonics!)
January 11, 2013 at 11:00 am
I started a batch today but substituted rum for the gin because it’s what I have. I’m hoping for a good result – it definitely sounds good!
I’m dying to try the apple pie bourbon too – that’s next 🙂 I can already tell it’s going to be hard to be patient though!
January 20, 2013 at 8:40 am
I think that rum would be great in the blueberry infusion! Let me know how it turns out…
Cheers~
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September 30, 2015 at 6:07 am
Roughly how my is a cup in metric, was wanting to try to make a litre 🙂
October 19, 2015 at 10:08 pm
One cup is 240 ml, so roughly 4 cups in a litre. Cheers~