Cherry Bourbon/Vodka

[Almanac]

I can't remember where I saw it but recently read a post asking if anyone had tried Cherry or Honey Bourbon. Next thing I know I'm picking up a big bag of Cherries in Tesco having first tasted a few to ensure good flavour.

Home again I decided to split and stone the cherries then soak an equal quantity in a liter of my excellent faux Bourbon and a liter of my best Vodka.

Every day I gave the jars a gently shake and observed a deepening red colour develop in both. The Bourbon got very dark indeed.

Today was the day to open both experiments, filter the contents through cotton wool to get a sparkling clean product and then taste both.

We tried the spirits neat, then with our usual mixers and we both came to the same conclusion - both bottles were only fit for recycling.

The Vodka had become bitter with a metallic aftertaste and my beloved Bourbon had been stripped of all flavour except that same tart and metallic aftertaste.

I've no idea how this developed as both spirits were premium and the cherries were fresh, sweet and washed meticulously before use. I can only conclude that some chemical reaction took place leading to the awful outcome.

Cursory lesson - experiment with very small batches first. I wouldn't mind but I bought a box of 200ml jars with sealing lids for this very purpose and promptly forgot all about them. Wally or what!

AM

[chill]

Hi Aiden,

That may have been me with the cherries, or I read it and tried it. I have so many experiments on the go that I can't recall. Happily, mine turned out excellent. I have no idea what happened to yours. I used Bing cherries, do you know what type you got?

This post made me check the second bottle (the first has been greedily drained). It too is excellent, so I will filter that. The cherries make a nice, if rather potent dessert.


Chuck

[YHB]

Sorry your first try did not turn out to well, don't give up.

I too have been thinking about cherry vodka, and I put the powers of the internet to work.

If you use Capt'n C's wonderful search engine, and search for "Cherry Vodka" you get lots of results from distillers sites around the world.

Here is one that popped up and I was intending to try, http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... =4&t=19415 lots of the recipes and methods call for the addition of sugar which seems to be missing from your method, or was that just an oversight?

[Almanac]

Leaving out the sugar was deliberate because I wanted to see how much cherry flavour would be transferred to the spirits.

Had I added sugar I think it would not have made a positive addition to the spirit as in the case of the Bourbon that lost all it's flavour and would have become just sweet!

We will rise again - there are many recipes out there and I'm game

Thanks for the link I'll explore that.

Capt C's search engine??? Where's that?

Aidan

[billmcc]

here it is

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1164&p=9462#p9462

[Whimpy64]

hi guys it was i who put up the post regarding the recipie for honey and cherry bourbon..... thanks for the replies and recipie suggestions


whimpy

[billmcc]

Just had a go at making some cherry bourbon vodka and mine imho has turned out fantastic.
I de-stoned 250 grm (1 punnet) of black cherries and added to a 1 litre bottle then crushed 15 of the stones and added this to the cherries then filled the bottle with 40 abv neutral and lidded then shaken daily for 10 days after wich the cherry vodka was drained and filtered.In a demijon i had 4 litre of 40 abv that had been sat on 100 grm jd barrel chips and 1 bottle ss topshelf bourbon essence and 4 tsp maple syrup for a month. to this i added the cherry vodka then drained and filtered this yielding 5.5 bottles of the most delicious tipple.
Bottoms up Cheers