I like to plan ahead. Really, I do. Well, in total honesty I like to plan ahead for most things; my car inspection was due in July and I promise to get to that pretty soon. But for most other stuff, I plan.
In August, I began to think about what would be a suitable whiskey to share over the holidays and cold winter ahead. I wasn’t thinking about a shelf stock expression; I intended to create something a little different and intentional. I decided that an infused product might be the ticket and something along the lines of a black cherry whiskey would be something I could have a run at putting together.
Choosing the Base Whiskey
The base whiskey had to be a mid-or-higher quality product. The temptation is always to consider buying a lower quality whiskey hoping that it will be magically improved to make it a “better” whiskey by whatever process you have. The reality is that’s just not going to happen. You will get back what you put into it — the flavor might change, but the quality will not.
I also wanted to go with a lower-or-mid proof. Nothing too hot, but enough ABV to extract all the flavors completely. I did not need or want anything over 100 proof. Additionally, it would help if the base product already had some underlying fruit notes of its own, which would hopefully blend well with the cherry flavor I was committed to.
Looking at my options, I decided to use Bushmills Prohibition Recipe as my base product. It hit all the requirements and more: it is good quality product which is a blend of aged whiskey beyond the three-year-minimum requirement, 92 proof, has fruit notes of its own, and is even non-chill filtered. I felt this was the best option for success, and not overly expensive if the project failed to deliver my intended
results.
The Process
I’m not much for sweetened liqueurs, so this proposed end-product had to be able to stand on its own without the addition of sugar, honey or other sweeteners. I intended to keep it simple and create a repeatable recipe so that if I hit the mark, we could make it annually.
By August 1, I had my plan and it was a simple one. I bought fresh black cherries. I pitted and cut them in halves, with enough to fill a measuring cup up to the 8 oz (one cup) line. I discarded all the stems and pits, but retained all the cherry juice and bits of pulp left on the cutting board. This was all dumped into a 32 oz glass canning jar. The jar was filled with the Bushmills product, sealed, and refrigerated.
Every week or so, I would check on it and shake up the jar. The color indeed left the fruit and turned the whisky a pleasant bright red while the fruit faded to a grayish brown. After about eight weeks, I was ready to sample and see what we had. The cherry flavor I was looking for was certainly there. No question about it. However, it was overly medicinal and the experience was like drinking cherry flavored cough syrup. Not what I was after at all.
The Tweaking
In consultation with my friend, and former bartender, Paul Stevens, he suggested the addition of some pure vanilla to redirect the flavor a bit. I took that advice. So with a little trial and error on small samples, I determined that two teaspoons of McCormick’s Organic Vanilla Extract was the right amount for the whole batch; two more weeks in the refrigerator to allow the vanilla to blend.
It was now a black cherry vanilla whiskey — and it is delicious. In the future I might simply include several whole vanilla beans in the jar with the fruit to extract that flavor naturally rather than adding extract at the end of the process.
I filtered the end product through a standard coffee filter back into the original whiskey bottle and discarded the now spent cherries. This eliminated all the bits of fruit pulp and left me with a bright, clear red product — which is what I had hoped to see from the start.
Infusing alcohol with fresh fruit is certainly not a new process. That’s been going on forever. When you can make your own and do it well, it’s a winner. I call my new black cherry vanilla whiskey, Byzantine Red.
