Oh hey, look, it’s been a month! Through tending to my ginger liqueur this past month, I’d say everything came out pretty well.
As we saw last month, I grated fresh ginger, and infused it in plain vodka. After one week, I checked it out. The color was still about the same as when I initially added the ginger; a muted foggy yellowish tint. When I opened the jar and took a sniff, I got an initial hit of just the smell of alcohol with a bit of ginger at the end. It seemed to not be ready, so I gave it another week.
After week two, I gave it another smell test. It was perfect. I got a whiff of ginger off the bat, instead of just pure vodka with a gingery hint. At this point, it didn’t need any more infusion, so I strained the ginger out with a fine mesh sieve.
Now if you wanted for this to be a ginger infused vodka, you can stop at this point. But remember, liqueurs are lighter in alcohol content and are sweeter, so I added about 1½ cups of simple syrup. I decided to give it a taste after adding the simple syrup. I got the sweetness from the syrup, but the alcohol taste was still a little strong, so I decided to let it sit for another week for the flavors to meld. After that week, everything came together!
This ginger liqueur would be great with club soda, in a Margarita, or my favorite, in a Sidecar. If you’re like me and you like ginger, try subbing out your orange liqueurs for your own homemade ginger liqueur!
Try it in some of the cocktail recipes featured in The Chopping Block's free guide to The Perfect Cocktail.
