Homemade Apricot Liqueur

February 7, 2019

Fancy making a lovely drink but there's no fresh fruit around? As I write this, it's February. Even during the winter months, you can make some wonderful homemade drinks from fruit. The fruit just needs to be dried or frozen, because there's precious little out there to forage right now. So here's something lovely you can make now using dried apricots, to enjoy later in the year.

The way that fruit liqueurs are made has changed little over the years. The principles are the same as they've always been. The fruit is steeped in alcohol for a while, enabling the alcohol to take on the taste (and often the colour) of the fruit. Sugar is added, sometimes before steeping and sometimes afterwards. And it is left for a period of time for the flavours to develop.

The 'leaving' part is important. Whilst you would never drink neat vodka by choice, or I wouldn't, it takes on a beautiful softness over time with ingredients added. The key is time.

How this Apricot Liqueur Recipe is Different

This recipe may differ from some you might have seen is that we recommend adding Glycerol to your apricot liqueur. That gives you that certain 'mouth feel' you get from shop bought liqueurs that is often missing from homemade ones.

Liqueurs are always expensive to buy because of the alcohol content. Whilst you still need to buy alcohol to make your own (vodka in this case), it nevertheless works out more economical to make fruit liqueurs at home than to buy them. Plus you have the satisfaction of knowing that you made it yourself.

Homemade Apricot Liqueur makes a lovely gift. We gave lots of it away last Christmas. Too much actually, we've hardly any left for ourselves (note to self: watch out for that next December).

Any dried apricots are fine for this recipe, whether they be called dried, soft, ready to eat... they'll all work, no matter how cheap. That goes for the vodka too... by the time you've soaked the apricots and added other things to it, it doesn't taste like vodka anymore. So use whatever vodka you have.

We stock up on dried apricots if we see them reduced, and we definitely stock up on inexpensive vodka whenever we can find some.

Apricot Liqueur Recipe

Homemade Apricot Liqueur Recipe

Ingredients

250g (7 oz) dried apricots

200g (7 oz) granulated sugar

100 ml white wine (any will do)

400ml vodka

10ml (2 tsp) glycerol (or food grade Glycerine from the bakery section in your supermarket)

plus you'll need

1 large preserving jar with a clip top lid, well washed

A sieve and

Some muslin for straining

Method

1. Rinse the apricots, chop them up into quarters. Place in the jar.

2. Put the wine into a saucepan, heat very gently with the sugar until the sugar dissolves. Allow the wine and sugar to go cold, pour over the apricots. Close the lid loosely so no insects find their way in.

3. Leave for 24 hours. Add the vodka and glycerol. Clip down the lid, swirl the jar to incorporate everything.

4. Keep the jar on a shelf somewhere (not a windowledge). Swirl it whenever you're walking past at least once a day, for about a month. You'll notice the liqueur going a nice shade of golden as the apricots diffuse into it.

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Daily swirl of the apricot liqueur. So simple to make, so delicious to drink! Search Homemade Apricot Liqueur on the blog for the recipe, link in bio 😋#homemade #homemadeliqueur #apricotliqueur #makeyourown #handcrafted #handmade #homemadedrinks #homemadegiftideas

A post shared by AlmostOffGridBev (@almostoffgridbev) on Jul 21, 2020 at 11:10am PDT

5. After a month, strain the liqueur through a muslin-lined sieve. You can gently squeeze the fruit to extract as much liquid as possible.

6. Leave it to settle for a couple of days, then siphon the liqueur into pretty bottles leaving any sediment behind.

7. Label your liqueur with some nice labels, so you know what it is later. You think you'll remember. But you won't.

8. Store for at least 3 months to allow all the flavours to beautifully mix. Then drink and enjoy, on it's own or over ice. It's lovely.

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