Springtime Tipples

This week, the rain and heavy skies forgot to get out of bed and for one glorious day, the sun shone warm on my back. The birds sang, the breeze ruffled the daffodils, the air smelled sweet and optimism seemed, for a fleeting minute, to have returned to our beleaguered nation.

Alas, fake spring must have woken winter from its somnolence and the skies are back to grey, the winds back from the north and the daffodils have cast their heads sullenly back to the floor.

But optimism is infectious and that hint of a change in the weather that must surely come has lifted my mood no end. The sun no longer sets before 6pm, the days are now perceivably lengthening and far out on the distant horizon is the faintest inkling of cold drinks outdoors in the sunshine!

My winter booze concoctions are coming along nicely. The sloe gin is now rich and dark with colour and it will soon be time to consider taking the liquid off the fruit to halt the creep of almond notes from the stones. My first attempt at scrumpy is settling out nicely and should be ready to bottle within the next few weeks and my blackberry whiskey, whilst looking dark and sludgy now, smells amazing and will only improve as the steep deepens.

Now is the time to get ahead of the game as all too soon the bounty of spring ingredients for epic booze options will be here and the window to pick is ever so short. So planning now is essential to ensure you are set to maximise the potential. Now is the time to start putting together the materials needed to pick, process, prepare and store. And also to choose which drinks to make and, perhaps most importantly, how much to make of each.

The three main methods of using wild spring plants to make booze are fermentation, infusion and fortification. You can also make concentrates, syrups, dessicates and distillates but to keep things simple for the kitchen booze engineer like me, you’ll probably have most of what you need already to hand.

A simple kit list should include the following basics:

• A jug of 1 - 5 litres 
• A bottle brush
• A sieve and ideally some filters (coffee filters are fine, a muslin or cheese cloth is a useful  addition)
• A large funnel
• Wide mouth jars (Kilner type or similar)
• Sealable bucket or plastic jerry can
• Clean, empty, screw top wine or spirit bottles
• Sugar

What you might need to buy (especially if you plan fermenting):

• Bungs with a hole to fit your fermenters
• Airlocks
• Sterilisation compound
• Yeast and nutrient
• Syphon

That’s pretty much it.

Before we kick off and look at some delicious hooch we can make, a few basics to keep in mind to avoid problems and make the whole endeavour simple and enjoyable.

First things first and I will repeat this several times. If you are not 100% sure you’ve picked the right plant, DO NOT USE IT. There are some deeply unpleasant toxic nasties lurking in the hedgerows so don’t wing it!

Secondly, and in a similar vein, you are aiming to make things you like and potentially yeast likes. Other microbes will also like what you’ve made but they are not as benevolent as our friend Sacchromyces cerevisiae (literally ‘sugar fungus’ ‘of beer’) so take great care to clean and sterilise anything and everything you use in the preparation of your hooch. Pay particular attention to any jars, bottles and caps you intend to store the liquids in as they will be there long enough for the nasty microbes to win the war and spoil your efforts (and potentially take the battle to you personally).

Those are really the only two non-negotiables, the following are handy hints, mostly gleaned from terrible messes and frustrating oversights. In no particular order:

• Good ingredients make good booze.
• More is not always better.
• Fizzy drinks require pressure rated bottles. Wine bottle cupboard grenades are not fun.
• The best results often result from the least interference - leave it alone to do its thing.
• Wide mouth jars are your friend - as with hands in cookie jars, kids heads in railings and certain bedroom proclivities, if you put something in, always have a plan to get it out.
• We are not the only airbreathers - make sure your seals are airtight!

While autumn presents us with fruits, seed, and berries, rich in colour, flavour and importantly sugar, spring’s harvest is young green shoots, rising sap and delicate flowers. I want to use wild ingredients that are in abundance around me and plan to kick off with a fairly simple infusion or two. First I plan a gorse flower infused rum

Out here on the Cornish cliffs, gorse grows literally everywhere and the deep yellow flowers are available year round but in early spring, they are less affected by gorse weevils, those little black dots that festoon the flowers in late spring. Gorse flowers give an amazing, delicate coconut flavour and I’d love to have a Pina Colada without resorting to Malibu come summer.

The flowers are best fresh so get the other bits you’ll need together first. A bottle of white rum (Bacardi will do but treat yourself and maybe grab a bottle of Two Drifters made in Devon) 100 grams of white caster sugar and the zest of an orange. Be careful not to get the white pith as it’s unpleasantly bitter! Sterilize a wide mouthed Kilner jar and mix the ingredients together to gently dissolve the sugar. Pop to one side, grab some gloves as the gorse is mighty prickly and pick 4 or 5 good handfuls of gorse flowers. Make sure you pick them above waist height so you don’t risk any unwanted ‘dog additive’. Give them a rinse in a sieve and pop them into the mixture, giving the lot a gentle stir. Seal the jar and pop into a cool dry cupboard for a few days. Strain the liquid through a muslin cloth and give it a good squeeze to get the flavour out and leave as little of the rum behind as possible. Decant into a clean, sterilised wine or spirit bottle and either get stuck in or keep it until the summer. The high ABV will keep it indefinitely but the colour and flavour will slowly fade especially if left in the light.

Epine

Next up is a fortified wine and one I’ve made before and wish I’d made more! Vin d’Epine, Troussepinette or more commonly simply epine is a traditional french springtime aperitif and is absolutely delicious! A red wine, fortified with brandy or eau-de-vie, sweetened then infused with young blackthorn leaves it tastes like a light port with the leaves imparting a delicate almond aroma. Come April or even early May, once the blackthorn leaves get to about 10 cm long, you’re ready to go.

I’m going to make six bottles so will start with 4 bottles of dry red wine, preferably French and certainly one you’d be happy to drink by itself. This will make 4 - 5 litres so you’ll need a large wide-mouthed kilner (or several smaller ones). Add the wine to the jar, add a bottle of halfway decent french brandy, 500 grams of white sugar (you may wish to add a little more to taste before you bottle it) and 100 grams of blackthorn leaves, washed and spun dry. Give it a gentle shake to help dissolve the sugar, seal it tightly and put away in a cool dark place for 2 to 3 weeks. A couple of times a week, give it a gentle shake to mix the sugar and also to keep the leaves submerged so they don’t get mouldy.

After 3 weeks, sieve through muslin, squeezing to get the last of the booze and decant into clean, sterilized wine bottles. Now, you can drink epine immediately but it will definitely improve with a few months left alone to mature and makes an amazing elevenses alternative to port and sloe gin on a shoot day.

Pine Needle Soda

Finally, I want to build on my scrumpy making escapades but I don’t want the step up in processes to making beer so I am torn between an elderflower fizz or an American recipe I’ve seen for a low alcohol  Sprite-like drink, Pine Needle Soda. This one intrigues me so I think it has to be the one to try.

Be sure you know your pines from your yew tree as the yew is highly toxic and won’t do you any good. Avoid Ponderosa and Lodgepole pine as well. That said, if you stick to Scots pine or Spruce, they are the tastiest and easiest to identify. If you’re not sure, don't risk it.

This recipe is really easy and ready in 2 to 3 days so if you get your timings right, it could be a great mixer for the coconut rum with its bright, citrussy flavours and natural effervescence. 

You’ll need your wide mouthed jar, 1-200 grams of pine needles (rinse first) per litre and 60 grams of light brown sugar or honey. The only other ingredient is water. You need to avoid tap water as it may kill the natural yeast present on the needles so you can either bring it to the boil in a pan and allow to cool for a few hours or use bottled water. You can also dissolve the sugar in the water by gently warming it but do allow to cool before adding it. Pop the new growth pine needles in the jar, add the sugar or honey of not dissolving it, then add the water being careful to leave an inch or two gap or headspace to the lid. Seal it up and pop it in a warm place like a sunny windowsill for 3 to 5 days. The wild yeasts will begin to ferment the sugars and create the fizz. Don’t leave it too long as the fermentation can burst the seals. Open and drink immediately. It will be slightly alcoholic but the fermentation period is short enough not to ferment all the sugar giving you a slightly sweet, fizzy, citrussy drink to mix or just drink with a wedge of lemon. You can let the fermentation run longer to make it stronger but you’ll need an airlock and keep it out of direct sunlight. You're then making pine beer and I don’t think that’s on my menu this year!

So there you have it, three slightly different drinks to make this spring. Give them a try and let me know how you get on!