A few years ago, before the covid lockdowns, there was a product on the market called Prohibition High Alcohol kits. These were very popular and came in a range of flavours including cherry brandy, london dry gin, whiskey, coconut rum, apricot brandy, peach schnapps and sloe gin. Sadly, the makers of these kits sold their business and the new company decided to stop making them. They had a few left over the cherry brandy and the coconut rum, but these quickly sold out. And so now these kits have been sadly discontinued.
But why were the Prohibition kits so popular? Well, they helped you make 4.5 litres of high strength alcohol at about 20% without the need of a still and the flavours were pretty good.
I personally loved the cherry brandy the kit made. I still have a bottle of it maturing nicely (it's about 10 years old) and for that specific kit, I found if you could hide a bottle or 2 away and forget about them for a few years, they really improved with age.
The kits took about 4 weeks to make and the process was pretty simple, so we have decided to try a few experiments to see if we can recreate these kits, so that you can enjoy making them at home too.
So let's get brewing...
First we start by dissolving 1.6kg of sugar in 3 litres of water...
Then, lots of stirring to dissolve all the sugar. then a couple of ingredients to help the fermentation go smoothly and then a sachet of yeast...
Basically, we are making a high alcohol sugar wash. But we wont be running this through a still.
I've taken a SG reading and it's coming out at 1.124, so it should reach an ABV around 20%. Fingers crossed as this now goes into my warm cupboard for a week to ferment.
After a few days the yeast had completed most of the fermentation, but it wasn't capable of fully fermenting the sugar. So I made up a starter with another yeast, the Still Spirits Classic 8 Turbo Yeast. This worked a treat and in 48 hours the SG was 1.000. Perfect!
The yeast and nutrients have added an interesting colour to the water, and the liquor is quite murky, so I decided to leave it for 48 hours to begin the clearing process.
Using a syphon, the liquor was transferred from the bucket to a Demi John.
A mixture of Sodium Metabisulphite and Fermentation stopper is added to the liquor in the demijohn. This will kill any remaining yeast and will help prevent any further fermentation and also help prevent any infection. This is swirled in.
There is also a lot of CO2 dissolved in the liquor from the fast fermentation, so swirling the demi-john helps knock out the dissolved CO2.
It is swirled for 1 minute, 3 times a day for 2 days. This gives time to knock out the CO2 and for the stabiliser to work.
This might seem a strange step in the process, seeing that we are trying to clear the liquor, but this is the magic of activated charcoal. It has been processed so each particle of activated charcoal has millions of microscopic holes. These soak up any impurities in the liquor including colours and smells and tastes. This helps purify the liquor. and it also looks great once you have swirled it around!
This is left for 48 - 72 hours to soak up all those impurities.
Then it's time to add our finings and here I'm using a 2 stage finings. The first is Kieselsol, a silicone based clearing agent. This is added in and the demi john swirled to mix it up.
It's left for 1 hour to start combining with the particles that are suspended in the liquor.
Then the second stage (chitosan) is added. These 2 finings work together to cause all the particles to clump together and sink to the bottom of the demi-john.
This was then placed somewhere cool where it would not be disturbed for 1 week to fully clear.
Once it is fully clear, it was time to carefully syphon the liquor off the sediment into a bucket, this will make it easier when we add the flavourings.
Next comes the flavourings. For this kit, I had recently visited the Canary Islands, and when you have a meal in a restaurant, at the end, with the bill, you get a shot to sip of honey rum. Usually each restaurant make their own to their own recipe by adding honey, lemon and spices.
So, first we need to turn this Liquor into rum. I like gold rum, so using the Still Spirits Spiced Gold Rum. This will add the spice flavours you get in the Canaries version.
I worked out I would need 4 sachets, so all 4 get poured in.
Once all 4 had been added, it needs a really good mix!
Now it's time for the honey, and here I'm using a big jar of runny honey from a major supermarket. You can use whatever honey you like!
Pour the whole jar into the 4.5 litres of rum liquor.
This will need a really good mix, but try not to whip air into the liquor.
Once it's all mixed, sterilise your bottles and fill them up. Here I'm using 500ml clear swing top bottles.
It doesn't take long and there you have it. Now to make some labels and stick them on.
And it's as easy as that. With the added honey and the flavourings, the ABV has dropped a little to around 17%ABV, but that's enough for this type of liqueur. Well for me anyway.
It's sweet, lots of honey carried along on the sweet vanilla spiced golden rum. So it's not too in your face and will make a perfect digestif after any meal, or just as a quick nightcap.
Hope you enjoyed this blog, we had fun making it.
We are going to try and make this into a kit for you to buy so you can make this at home too.
I also love limoncello, so I thought I would try making one of those too.
Any requests?
Remember, distilling without a licence is illegal here in the UK, so if you want to stay on the right side of the law and make a spirit like drink, then you can make this to get to 20%ABV
Cheers and happy brewing!
1 comment
Sam Davey
Hi I really miss the Liquor Quick kits (no honest it was the name) they were similar high alcohol and there was an Ameretto flavour that I would love to make more of. They also did a mint chocolate liquor. I would be first to buy an Ameretto flavour kit as I cant get them anywhere. I am not too technical and all the gubbins was included, so I just had to follow the instructions.
Hi I really miss the Liquor Quick kits (no honest it was the name) they were similar high alcohol and there was an Ameretto flavour that I would love to make more of. They also did a mint chocolate liquor. I would be first to buy an Ameretto flavour kit as I cant get them anywhere. I am not too technical and all the gubbins was included, so I just had to follow the instructions.