Rumor has it the first hard frost will arrive in Wisconsin sometime tonight. We quickly pulled in our tomatoes, peppers, basil and the last bucket of raspberries. After another busy summer on our farm, I’m ready for the frost, the fall, the feeling of relief that life will slow down a bit. It’s the perfect time for a grateful toast in thanks for the abundant harvest as Mr. Snow Miser waits around the corner.
But wait — what should we toast with? In my early homesteading days I experimented briefly with beer and wine making, but my brewing career ranked short. I’m more of a cook than a scientist and couldn’t explain fermentation even if a free dram was on the line. After an attempt to make hard cider turned into five gallons of vinegar, I discovered a much easier form of homemade hooch: vodka infusions.
The basic concept is simple: Take cheap vodka, add fruit and sugar. 
Cheap vodka works fine for infusions as you are adding flavor through the fruit. While recipes and perspectives vary on how long you need to let the fruit and vodka sit and age, I find more time adds up to stronger flavor.
With that last bucket of raspberries harvested today, I made my annual batch of the Raspberry Cordial recipe below. This raspberry cordial often seconds as an eerie decoration just in time for Halloween. When the raspberries “float” in the vodka during the first step of the raspberry cordial-making process, the vodka turns a rich red color and the clumped together raspberries turn white, resembling a brain floating in blood. Talk about creative recycling.
Raspberry Cordial
Ingredients:
2 quarts (8 c.) raspberries
2 quarts (8 c.) vodka
2 quarts (8 c.) water
2 ½ c. sugar
Directions:
* Mix raspberries and alcohol and let sit two weeks in sterilized gallon-sized glass jar with a tight-fitting lid.
* After approximately two weeks, strain raspberries into a sieve.
* Mix water and sugar. Heat until dissolved. Mix water and sugar with strained raspberry mixture and stir well.
* Pour into sterilized glass containers and age in a dark, cool spot for a couple of months. Adjust the final infusion based on your personal taste, adding water as needed.
Yield: About 1 ½ gallons
Recipe from Edible Earth: Savoring the Good Life with Vegetarian Recipes from Inn Serendipity
Photo Credit: Lisa Kivirist
Lisa Kivirist
Lisa Kivirist embodies the growing “ecopreneuring” movement: innovative entrepreneurs who successfully blend business with making the world a better place. Lisa is co-author, with her husband, John Ivanko, of Rural Renaissance: Renewing the Quest for the Good Life, capturing the American dream of farm living for contemporary times. Her latest release, ECOpreneuring: Putting Purpose and the Planet Before Profits is a compact, dynamic tool kit for a fresh approach to entrepreneurial thinking, blending passion for protecting and preserving the planet with small business pragmatics. As a W.K. Kellogg Food & Society Policy Fellow and Director of the Rural Women's Project, Lisa champions a voice for women farmers and rural ecopreneurs through media, speaking and advocacy work. Lisa runs the award-winning Inn Serendipity Bed and Breakfast in southwest Wisconsin, completely powered by renewable energy and considered amongst the “Top Ten Eco-Destinations in North America.” Her culinary focus on local and seasonal cuisine – with most ingredients traveling less than 100 feet from her organic gardens to B&B plates – earned recognition in publications from Vegetarian Times to Country Woman and inspired her cookbook, Edible Earth: Savoring the Good Life with Vegetarian Recipes from Inn Serendipity. In addition to feature writing for publications such as Hobby Farm Home, Mother Earth News and Wisconsin Trails, Lisa is the lead writer for Renewing the Countryside, a non-profit organization showcasing rural entrepreneurial and agricultural success stories. Lisa also penned Kiss Off Corporate America: A Young Professional’s Guide to Independence. Lisa shares her farm with her husband, their young son, a 10kw wind turbine and a colony of honeybees.
2 Responses to When Life Gives You Raspberries, Add Vodka
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This is great, look forward to looking into every area. Thanks for being there.
If you’re using cheap vodka, consider running it through a Brita pitcher (if you have one) a few times before you infuse. Heard that it classes the vodka up considerably, particularly if you are going to flavor the vodka.