Book Review on Infusing Spirits and Making Liqueurs

Here are some books on infusing spirits and making liqueurs – a process completely legal so long as you don’t sell it.

Classic Liqueurs: The Art of Making and Cooking with Liqueurs by Cheryl Long and Heather Kibbey is part of the Creative Cooking Series and was updated in 2005. It has a nice short and concise intro including the basics, equipment needed, alcohol basis, other ingredients, and ageing before offering up 37 pages of fruit liqueur recipes and 21 pages of non-fruit liqueurs using herbs and spices. It does have some cream liqueurs in it. Next, it has 17 pages of drink serving suggestions, followed by 65 pages of food recipes using the liquors. This seems like a fun book, but there are no pictures to inspire you. Still, it seems very well organized. I accidentally got my hands on the older version printed in 1996, which appears to have less recipes in all the categories.

Cordials from Your Kitchen by Pattie Vargas and Rich Gulling was published in 1997. It is set up very much like Classic Liqueurs, but with more chapters breaking out fruit liqueurs, nut liqueurs, herb and spice cordials, cream liqueurs, candy cordials, coffee liqueurs, flavored brandies, rums, and vodkas, and fruits preserved in spirits. There are chapters dedicated to drinks or food recipes with the liqueurs, but instead are included as side notes in the margins. Again, it doesn’t have pictures, but I would probably pick this book over Classic Liqueurs.

Homemade Cream Liqueurs by Dona and Mel Meilach was published in 1986. Not to be confused with crème de liqueurs, which is a sweeter liqueur, cream liqueurs such as Baileys contain dairy cream. There really isn’t another book like this out on the market. It starts off with a brief intro and then the history of cream liqueurs, explaining that cream liqueurs contain cream, and saying that cream liqueurs have really only been on the market since 1979 when Bailey’s Original Irish Cream Liqueur figured out how to add cream to their product, keep it from separating from the alcohol, and keep it stable enough for it to be on shelves for years. Homemade cream liqueurs, it warns, will have a shorter shelf life than store bought because a person at home will not have the same tools to homogenize the mixture. To make a cream liqueur, the book says you will need a blender, measuring spoons, clear liqueurs, flavorings, canned or fresh milk, possibly eggs, and containers to store the final product in. It warns that the quality is a bit tricky to control, but offers up a suggested recipe record sheet. It talks a little bit about theory so that you can later go and experiment to make your own cream liqueurs. It then offers up 23 pages of cream liqueur recipes, followed by a chapter on cocktails, coffees, and ice creams, a chapter on cakes and cheesecakes, a chapter on pies, filled pastries, and fruit dishes, a chapter on cookies and cupcakes, a chapter on candies and confections, a chapter on sauces, quiches, fondues, and flan, all made with cream liqueur in it. While other books might have cream liqueur recipes, I feel that they don’t cover the topic as well as this book does.

Luscious Liqueurs: 50 Recipes for Sublime and Spirited Infusions to Sip and Savor was written by AJ Rathbun in 2008. The library lost the copy, so I can’t really tell you how this book is laid out or the quality of the recipes. However, I do remember this book for having pictures, which can inspire you on how to package the liqueur up, especially if you are giving it as a gift.

Book Review: Making Wild Wines & Meads

Admittedly, it is a little hard for me to review the front portion of Making Wild Wines & Meads: 125 Unusual Recipes Using Herbs, Fruits, Flowers, and More by Pattie Vargas and Rich Gulling. Because it was not my first wine making book, I am not as comfortable pulling out this 1999 book on winemaking techniques. What I use this book for is for more recipes and inspiration.

This book is the best book I have come across for organizing recipes. Recipes are alphabetized by the primary ingredient within their subject chapters. Chapters include:

• Making wines from fruits
• Making wines from flowers, nuts, and vegetables
• Making meads, melomels and metheglins
• Making wines from herbs

For instance, for apples there is a dry apple wine, medium-sweet apple wine, spiced apple wine, crab apple wine, and an apple cider wine before it moves on to apricot recipes. Each recipe takes up a page and has the title across the top, which makes it easy to find recipes. Sometimes recipes contain a little variation on the bottom of the page. It is also quite sterile when it comes to the recipes, much like cooking, telling you what you need and how to make it. This is in contrast to Terry Geary’s The Joy of Home Winemaking personal commentary about how or why things are done a particular way. This could be a good thing if you are annoyed with Geary’s comments, but it could be a bad thing as you may not learn why things are done a particular way.

The back of the book is lacking in anything interesting, useful, and at your fingertips.