Blueberry Liqueur Is Easy & Fast To Make 

Frozen fruit also benefit from always being in season and at peak ripeness at the store. The process they use to freeze the berries actually mitigates a lot of the shredding that would happen from freezing. It's just that in their case, the frozen berries are higher quality

Instead of pressing the berries, you could add sugar to them and let it sit for a while. The sugar will draw out some of the liquid, thereby dissolving the sugar and making basically a syrup. You could use the syrup for sweetening. This way you get a little extra out of the berries without the cloudiness...

His kids are gonna have fun in high school 😂

Hi Jesse, it is the Romanian-Canadian guy again. I just saw this video and the one with strawberries liquor so I have a version recipe for you. The second most popular home made drink in Romania after plums brandy(tzujka) is something called vișinată, pronounced vichy-n-ata. It is a liquor, sweet and not very strong, made with a fruit base and sugar in a proportion 2 to 1, fruits double quantity(weight) than sugar, and a neutral spirit like alcohol distillate or simply vodka. So let's say we use 1 kilo fruits, half kilo sugar and 1 litre vodka. The procedure is way simpler than you showed but it takes longer. The most popular fruits used for this are vișine(vichy-ne) which are what we call the sour cherries or tart cherries. So the name of the drink is the fruit word followed by the -ată suffix. In a way in English you could call this drink sourcherry-ade , similarly to lemon-ade, or sourcherry-ate, like in distill-ate. However you can use any similar fruit like "normal" sweet cherries(make sure you leave the pit/stone in these fruits), blueberries, strawberries, blackberries and even green walnuts, which is unripe walnuts before they develop the wooden shell! The name changes accordingly with the fruit like cireșată for sweet cherry, afinată for blueberry(we use a wild version in Romania), căpșunată for strawberry or murată for blackberry. Sorry for the linguistic digress. :o) But the recipe is all the same: in a jar or a jug, big enough for your thirst :o) , you start with a layer of cleaned, washed fruits followed by a layer of sugar and then alternate until done with the sugar on top. Give it a shake to evenly spread the sugar around, cover the jar with something breathable like cheese cloth or just put the lid or cap on but not very tight and then set the timer for 2 weeks. During this period you can give it a shake once in a while. What happens is the sugar will slowly extract the juices and aroma from the fruit and turn into a syrup. After 2 week you simply poor 1 litre of that neutral spirit or vodka and you drink is basically ready to taste. However, for the best result you should wait at least one month, the longer the better, but usually after 2 months is kind of ready. You now can filter it leaving the fruits behind and enjoy it. You can add if you want at the beginning also a bit of vanilla, cloves and such if you want to spice things a bit but it is not necessary. And guess what, those fruits after you filter the drink are AWSOME, especially the sour cherries! We would eat them as kids, no problem. They will shrink and get wrinkly but never go bad, maybe just dry but you can actually use them for a second batch by just adding sugar again and following the same recipe. Almost every household in Romania prepare this drink every year when the sour cherry season is on, which is usually July. I hope you will give this a try. Very simple and super delicious, a real panty dropper. :o))) Happy distilling! An addition, I just found this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-_8-FA-Wppro.html

Well, that settles it. Jesse's life is pretty much perfect. Oh, and the blueberry liqueur looks delicious;-)

I am so very hooked on this. I've found that the blueberry liqueur and ginger ale is now my favorite thing to sit around with. Strawberries are about to come in season locally. That's my next one.

Your methods, your explanation, apparatus everything is spot on. I just love to see a person doing what he loves most ... Keep it up .

24 hrs into the maceration, and I'm shocked how pale the berries are already. Set out to make lemoncello, and while out buying lemons, I ran onto fresh blueberries on sale. Now I'm going to have 2 infusions running. I'm using Everclear this time around, but have a stainless 20gal pot still (also used for brewing beer) I built back in the late 80's, going to have a crack at some TPW this winter. Thanks for the great videos!

What a beautiful family. This video is strangely wholesome.

Anyone else gonna talk about the quotes when he mentioned the legality of distilling. That’s gotta be my favorite part of this episode

I made 1 bottle and tasted yesterday (after 2 weeks only) and wow, this stuff is amazing! The leftover berries I used for jam and used it the next morning 👊😉. Thanks Jesse, great stuff ✌

I don't even drink, I just love way watching this kind of stuff. And I just love Kiwis.

I just finished an infusion with 45% grain alcohol and made a Blueberry Chai with frozen that I left out a little bit to start to thaw in my jar, and then added the spirits, which hold my tea bags for 90 minutes. It's amazing.

Thanks for including the bit about creating our own comparisons, now I have new ideas about splitting homebrew into different secondary phases (coffee, or tea?)...cheers!

A bit of acidity lifts up the "fruit" flavour of things. Some balsamic, or lemon or whatever acid source you think would work with blueberries, in the right ratio, instead of making it sour will boost the blueberries a tonne

I think that Finnish/Scandinavian bilberries ( in Finland we call them mustikka, or blackberry, but they are not related to blackberries You know..) will make a superior liqueur, which is more earthy and flavourful, than blueberries which you have on the other side of the earth! Cheers to almost 100k subs, and I will be the next for You. Greetings from Tampere, Finland!

I've never done this with blueberries, but with mayhaws, scuppernongs, peaches, wild plums, and blackberries the alcohol-soaked fruits make pretty decent adult smoothies when blended with crushed ice and simple syrup or agave.

i'm so glad i planted a bunch of blueberry bushes in my garden this spring. and bet your life, i'll also play around with raspberries, blackberries, gojiberries, cranberries and all! the! berries!

We put a cup of blue berries in a quart of 100 proof. With a 1/ 4 cup of sugar in about 2 weeks its bomb. We leave berries in. One time we used the berries in some waffles and got a pretty good buzz for breakfast lol Thanks for the vid as always great info.

I have been missing your videos. So glad to have a new video making stuff

Why not use the berries afterward to make smoothies? They still have a bit of flavour, and they'll have lots of fibre plus a fair bit of alcohol. I think they'd make for a very nice, slightly hard smoothie.

I live in Canada. Canada is cold. Blueberries are frozen. Fresh berries are $6 for 300 gr at the grocer. I went to the frozen section and got 1.75kg of blueberries for $13. Works for me. I used 95% Everclear and sweetened it with 3/4 cup white sugar and 1/3 cup of honey. DELICIOUS!! Next time I’m doing it the same and will experiment with Canadian maple syrup. Berr…frozen berries when thawed have lots of berry liquid…perfect for adding to the alcohol.

I made the same thing using prickly pears, its big in Malta. I highly recommend it.

I bet it would be pretty good with gin as the base instead of vodka Gin is just more pleasant and naturally fragrant and works well with many fruits

The high-sided metal bowl looks like a great bit of kit, and the blueberries got some royal treatment here, cheers!

Freezing fruit breaks the cell walls, so when you let the thaw, more of the flavor and goodness comes out ;)

Reminds me a bit of when I was living in Japan, & had a lesson in making traditional umeshu (sour plum liqueur). In ume season, you could buy all the makings at the local supermarket: large glass containers (which I still have), and fresh ume, sugar, and white spirit (legal to buy over there). You take a toothpick & prick each plum 5-6 times, remove the stalk, and then cover with sugar (I forget the exact proportions), and cover with white spirit. Let it stand for several weeks or a year, and you have a lovely liqueur! (Two year umeshu is better, 3 year is better still, if you can leave it that long.) I'm going to try it now with blueberries (since we don't have ume here in Australia, and it is blueberry season!) ...and I now have an air still, so can make my own spirit without paying through the nose for OP vodka...

Nice. I'm going to make this, and another with raspberries. Thanks mate!

I agree with your comments on the blueberries essence. Once while making a lighter ale, i put three fresh blueberries in each bottle before bottling lol. Kind of as a joke at the time. After they sat for a while though, friends called it blueberry ale as when the bottle was opened one could smell blueberry but yet of course not taste anything. I guess it's good to experiment. That was over 25 years ago and now there are blueberry ales everywhere but they don't actually put the berries in the bottle. Cheers!

I just found my new hobby, ,,I love this guy

I think this was one of my favorite videos. Really enjoyed it. Thanks.

Do you ever add acid to your licquers? I think a little lemon juice might balance nicely with the sugar and blueberries.

You my friend are Blessed with a beautiful family. I always let my berries turn white then save them to add to my next run to recover all of the alcohol they hold with out mashing them up to cloud my final product. Great video Jesse keep them coming. Try adding a drop or to of vanilla and have you every tried the powdered cream mix it goes great with most berries and stone fruit?

Love it Jesse. Love seeing the kiddos and y’all having a good time. I’m gonna try this one too.

Hey Jesse! Received my Still It flasks in the mail today all the way from NZ. One is for me and the other is for my distilling/brewing buddy. Keep the videos coming. GA-St Peters Missouri USA

EXCELLENT Video... LOVED it... You would have been a great Science Teacher... Because I learned a lot today from you... and I used to be a Chemical Engineer in the Oilfield. (Downhole drilling)... Question: Can you do this with Concord Grapes?

Term of the month, "retro nasal impression"! Love it! Thanx Jessy

Love the micro video of the picking up process, god bless your family Jesse and thank you for all your information!

Just found this great channel and saw this video. I have found your method to work but with a slightly weaker flavor end product to what I ended up preferring. For when I make it with blueberries (or other fruit (raspberries blow blueberries out of the water)) I take frozen berries and actually freeze thaw them as rapid as possible at least twice (the more solid/dense/tougher flesh the fruit the more times needed to freeze/thaw). As others have stated this breaks up the cells and frees much of the juice. I then heat all the berries to above 140 F for an hour before squeezing through a fine mesh (nutmilk bags work, or for more pressure squeeze I actually use a folded 100% cotton XXL white T shirts as they are cheaper and can handle more force and repeated use than nutmilk bags). After juicing as much as possible I then add everclear to the leftover pulp at usually a 1.5:1 ratio by volume of pulp to everclear (sometimes 1:1 if the pulp is very dry on this first squeeze). I let this soak for a day or 2 as I dehydrate the juice from the berries to the final volume equivalent of the everclear added to the pulp. After the day or 2 of dehydrating and everclear infusion I then resqueeze the pulp to extract the infused everclear (the resultant pulp usually looses most of its color and ends up extremely dry). The final step is combining the infused everclear with the dehydrated/concentrated juice to make a roughly 50% abv or 100 proof strong flavor liqueur with no ingredients but the berries (fruit) and the everclear (the concentrated juice tends to add all sugar needed). Works for almost every fruit I have tried with the caveat of some fruits being more difficult to juice and or becoming too fine with some pulp coming through the squeeze process requiring a finer filter after the final liqueur is made and allowed to settle for a week or sometimes longer (you can watch the separation over time and I usually then pass the upper clear layer through a coffee filter to a separate bottle as the final clear product, however if you don't mind the superfine pulp the bottom cloudy layer tends to have even more berry/fruit flavor).

Going to Mount Adams tomorrow morning to pick wild huckleberries. Forget the jam and jelly!

Adorable family!

Just as an experiment I tried using dehydrated blueberries and it worked really well but I did leave the berries for 2 weeks. I'm also currently trying dried cherries to see how it works

I have made blueberry gin in this way tasting over a 12 month maceration period. The flavor evolves quite a lot, if you like this I would recommend trying it over a much longer time.

My brother makes a choke cherry liquor every year from his fresh picked choke cherries omg it's to die for and on ice cream I'm in heaven.

I always filter before adding sugar or sweetness. I found filtering sugar through the coffee paper was way too slow. The sugar tends to clog the paper. I really like your thoughtful tastings.

Loved the video picking berries with good girls , they are so cute. Your video shots were creative too ! Professional stuff ! Keep it up

I do wonder how a touch of lemon for acidity would go with this 🤔 I think I'll have to make some this summer. I can see this being amazing in a gin and soda/tonic, a curl of lemon peel and a small sprig of rosemary. Great video! Thanks mate!

I'm going to make this with my own handpicked wild Swedish Blueberries. Northern Swedens blueberries are a lot smaller and sooo good, maybe even try doing it with Lingonberries and Cloudberries. Frozen tho

I’ve seen videos of Polish Nalewka that after the initial maceration in alcohol then put the berries into the sugar for a day or so then use the resulting syrup back into the liquor. Haven’t tried it yet but makes sense if your trying to layer flavour in.

I love making a lemon liquor. My son in law has me make him a cherry liquor. He likes it with a white rum. But I normally put it in the back of the cabinet for at least a month. His favorite was a batch I forgot about an it had set for at least 6 months

Lingonberries make excellent liquer too. I like to make mine from late-September berries, and let rest with a cinnamon stick and sugar until Christmas.

I can imagine using the leftover blueberries as the topping on a New York Baked Cheesecake 🤤

I made blueberry wine with honey an no yeast added to it. came out good. I let the yeast on the berries do the job.

im gonna try this but im also going to put it in an ultrasound cleaner see if that helps accelerate the progress in some way.

Yo Jesse great video yet again, your laugh still make me titter to my self when I hear it 🤣 definitely going to give this a go also may try it with black currents as I have a bush in my back yard. Keep up the good work buddy.

I made a blueberry wine (called Feeling Blue) where we hand picked the bluberries from a local farm. I then froze them as the freezing process creates jagged ice crystals from the water inside the fruit which ruptures a lot of the cells. This, in turn, allows the berries to easily release their juice when you macerate it.

Cocktails would be fun. You might get a colour change at different pHs based on the anthocyanins in there? As you make the cocktail, you could add it to alkaline solvents like water, gin or rye spirit for a colour change flair if this extract is acidic. Then add acids like lemon juice last to get a second flair - colour change in the glass. Some fuschia berry extracts are very bright and change colour well at different pHs. Increase volume of berries to alcohol to mitigate the dilution effect on the colour in the glass :)

Blue berry syrup is the way to go brother ,it will blow your mind ,and to be honest you should use a gin basket or thumper to add the flavor without the color or loss of proof !!!! It's the new favorite from what I hear anyway !!!!!

I can't believe I've only just came across your channel dude!! Also love your work on PIMPING YO KIDS LOLOLOL they're boss!!

I will definitely be making some of this in the summertime here.

Ive always wanted to try something like this with Marion Berry's. One if my favorite berries, as they come from my area. Their delicious, and I bet they would make an incredible liqueur.

I've done similar for lemoncello & arrancello (citrus skins), but the 96% alcohol costs a fortune. At +40 EUR/liter for just the base spirit, it tends to end up costing almost the same or more than store bought branded stuff (not the cheap garbage either, like the lemoncello for example). Will mostly have to do with taxes getting higher as the proof goes up. It makes it so 'finished products' are eventually cheaper to buy since you're only paying taxes on 30/40% rather than 96%.

How do you make your vodka? Thank you for sharing the information in this video.

When it comes to sweetening berries, dark brown cane sugar is what I like best. Except for strawberry, that one goes with caster sugar.

Super! Healthy blueberry drink! LiveHealthy! ▶️👍

as a swede with forest filled with blueberrys, I'll for sure do this :D

For reference frozen berries are "better" although you can take the fresh ones and freeze them. When you freeze them the cells which hold the juice burst and it blends better so you don't have to crush them or anything. I make sloe gin and you either pick them after the first heavy frost or freeze them before use to make them soft!

id be tempted to use Blueberry Cordial as part of the sugar mixture.

wondering... if you don't mind the alcohol sharpness...would water be a potential instead of the sweet honey/sugar? Or does the sweet help to pull out the blueberry flavor over the alcohol?

If you don't use frozen berries, there's still benefit to freezing your own fresh ones first! Freezing causes the water inside the berries to turn into super sharp ice crystals that puncture the cell walls and help release the juice much much more easily when thawed.

Great Show. Myself since you asked : I like to make Blueberry Vodka as you did without the sweetness and its Oh so good on the rocks. I also enjoy making Blueberry Mead which is very yum to to yummy ! for a oh so sweet treat i like to get a 12oz glass of blueberry mead and load it with 2oz of blueberry vodka I call it my" drunk honeyberrybee" after 2 glasses of this Im feeling real nice. Cheers Mate

Cool i make limoncello and was trying to think of other stuff i could use

Marker 3:52 next time put thenm in a gallon freezer ZipLoc and run you rolling pin over them, insert qiploc top into your lovely jar and let the berries fall, repeat. I am going to make this sir! You have inspired me! ABV? already been vaped? oops wrong jargon. lol

What would happen if you left the berries in there for much longer. Like a month? Any advantages/disadvantages of doing that? Cheers!

Your daughters are adorable!

I have done similar with raspberries, I did freeze the to break them down, covered with high ABV for about a week strained, then covered the rest with sugar, turned out dam tasty.

Would you get more flavor by heating the berries with sugar prior to soaking in alcohol?

Wow your children are beautiful thank the heavens the Mrs. Still It genes are dominant

Awesome video. I want to make blackberry gin liqueur I guess it’s the same principle start with gin add the fruit and something to sweeten slightly? Love the idea of the honey syrup and I think blackberry and honey sounds amazing. I apologise if this is a stupid question but is there any sort of gas produced from this don’t want jars exploding everywhere?

Hey Jesse great video mate. What is the ratio of you sugar syrup ?

nice recipe new thoughts should try

I think it would, taste like a port wine. I will try this with fresh blueberries and frozen.

well i found your channel from bearded and bored. i enjoy your video's. you do yours different them me so it's nice to collect info. from others. next time you have a glass add just a little cream soda very little for me im not a big cream soda guy. but it makes go down much smoother and gives it kind of a more mellow taste like a tropical drink or something. thanks for the vids. i learned some new things between you and bearded and bored. looking forward to more.

I recommend heating them a little in a pan before. And please use wild blueberries. Even if frozen. Those are much better than those other blueberries. Also a little cinnamon, cardamom and alot of vanilla, as well as sugar (honey has too much flavor on its own) would be working totally well.

Heya. This just came up randomly on my home feed. This is similar to the process I use for my fruit tree. I was wondering if you've ever tried this with Jabuticaba fruit (Brazilian grape tree). Somewhat similar fruit but with a very tart skin. Makes a lovely macerated drink. Grows well here in SE Qld, AU. Should grow OK over on your side of the drink. Look up the tree. It's weird and awesome. LARGE harvests of fruit multiple times a year.

When making simple syrup, you should actually do 2 parts sugar to 1 part water, that way you can have more control over the sweetness. Also 2/1 simple syrup is shelf stable so you don’t need to fridge it.

Just a thought maybe just a tad of lemon zest in it. Always seems to bring out more blueberry flavor. When I make blueberry jam. It gives a little bit of a something that it's missing. Just a thought.

2:42 that beard wobble is absolutely fucking majestic

Should you saturate the berrys at room temp or would refrigeration mess things up?

Is there any benefit to aging it for longer on or off the fruit, or are fresh infusions something that only degrade with time after taking off the fruit?

Hi Jesse, Is there a hint you could give with the calculation of alc. volume for liquors? Thanks in advance!👍🏻👋🏻

YOUR KIDS ARE SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO CUTE!!!! Did you weigh them on the way in and on the way out? Hahaha we were the same with strawberry patches when we were kids.. picking our own berries was so much fun. Great video! I might just try this recipe!

When you macerate fruit one doesn't have to mash the fruit.the hydroscopic nature of alcohol and the cellular structure of fruit will along with a weekly shake allow the spirit to exchange molocule thru the skin of fruit and combine to with the water in the fruit.if your wanting the tannin profile that is found in the skins of fruit then by all means​ squash the fruit

Have you ever had the color change to black? We keep in it proper bottles and in a root cellar. Its weird tastes the same but just turns black. Have had this for a few years now and its our favorite.

Hi there.. Nice video 👍I'm also making it at home 🏡 but friend of mine please tell me that can we use egg white for fining this wine 🍷 to get it at earliest?

I totally agree about the flavour of blueberries. I have them almost every day for breakfast. The freshness is texture and almost melon like... the after taste is all about the lovely aromas of fresh blueberries, especially from the skins. They are not specifically sweet.

Maybe you can give me some advice between recipes: the one i was planning on using was dissolving sugar in vodka and then let the blueberry sit in for like 2 to 3 months. Is that too long of a soak? 🤔 Is 4 to 5 days really enough?

hey there, only just started watching your videos and sadly I'm unable to go to your patron due to Covid. but i love your work. It keeps my mind active and stops me going completely insane whilst out of work. I tried brewing my own cider and sadly ended up with cider vingar a few years back haha. But I love home brew/craft beers and other spirits and would love to make my own rum once I have the money to be able to do so. do you or anyone else in the comments have any suggestions in starting out, I don't have a still or anything else like that. Any advise will be very much appreciated, thanks for reading

Do you think it would be worth running the berry maceration through a juicer to get every drop out? Or would that be overkill...

Do the berries ferment at all when you add the alcohol? If so, is there any issue of methanol forming?