How to make a delicious raspberry cordial/liqueur?

July 23, 2007 2:09 PM

Does anyone have a good cordial/liqueur recipe that uses fresh berries and everclear? If so, please share!

It's July and, in Oregon, that means it's time to enjoy all sorts of fresh berries. We have a lot of Marion Berries and Raspberries to use up and thought we'd start making some cordials for holiday gifts. We have lots of sugar, everclear and wine bottles along with the fruit and just need a recipe to put it all together.

Any help is much appreciated. Thanks!

posted by charlesroper to food & drink (7 comments total)

I didn't make any of these myself, but I had a friend who did a lot of this. From what I could tell, she carefully cleaned the fruit and filled a large jar with them, filled it up solid with Everclear, capped it, and let it soak for a month or so. She then strained it through cheesecloth, squished as much juice as possible out of the pulp, and kept all the liquid. I think it usually ended up being about half the volume of the original container, so if you want a full bottle of berry liqueur, you'll need at least 2 and maybe 3 'stewing' containers of volume equal to your final bottle.

If anyone has specific recipes, pay attention, this was just from watching over her shoulder once. :)
posted by Malor at 2:30 PM on July 23, 2007

I've had great luck with the liqueur recipes found here. It's a ridiculously thorough site, although there aren't any marionberry-specific concoctions. He's got a blackberry brandy recipe that'll knock your socks off; I bet you could substitute marionberries with no ill effects.
posted by Vervain at 3:00 PM on July 23, 2007

My grandfather used a recipe about the same as the one Malor suggests except he would soak the berries in about a cup of sugar for a day or two first, then add the alcohol. I've tired it a few times (though with frozen berries) and it's always came out alright. Id say high quality alcohol is almost more important then the fresh berries though, even with the fruit you can really taste it when it's the cheap stuff.
posted by Captain_Science at 3:41 PM on July 23, 2007

Or go ahead and use the cheap stuff, but run it through a Brita (or other charcoal-based) filter first.
posted by jtfowl0 at 4:01 PM on July 23, 2007

Hrmmmm....here's a link that works.
posted by jtfowl0 at 4:05 PM on July 23, 2007

Thanks. Used a combination of a bunch of different recipes on that website to create a concoction of my own.

Made two separate 3-gallon batches tonight. One of Marion Berries, one of raspberries. Each batch contains TWO full (triple filtered) bottles of Everclear.

This is going to be a fun winter :)

Again, thanks for your help everyone - just what I was looking for!
posted by charlesroper at 10:38 PM on July 23, 2007

Sounds great, charles. I think I may try something similar. :)
posted by Malor at 6:16 AM on July 26, 2007