Tips & Tricks
Make Your Own Port
We received this recipe from one of our customers ... Enjoy!
"I was told you can make the best ports this way ... and, my brewing has proven the recipe correct. You must have an oak barrel to enhance the taste and this recipe is for a 5 liter barrel, "yes, I like port!"
Recipe
Add 1¼ cups of good Brandy or Cognac, 1 cup of red wine (Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon etc.) and fill the rest of the barrel with any cheap Tawny Port (about 1 gallon + 1 regular bottle). You can also add a small nip of whisky to the blend.
Leave it for about 2 months in the barrel, sampling once a week after around 6 weeks. It will generally develop more oak flavor as time goes on. If left too long it will be too woody.
When you’re happy with the flavor decant into bottles and Voila! … a perfect tasting port. If you drink directly from the barrel, you can keep adding a bit of Tawny (cheap) and the odd left over red wine from dinner.
Barrel-aging 101: How to turn even your $6 rot gut into sip-worthy spirit
Written by our friend Joanna Bellomy at Guide Live
It took a few days and as many brainstorming sessions to come up with my first few recipes. When those recipes proved to be super successful with my taste buds and bar patrons, I ordered a few more barrels. Now that I have six constantly-aging spirits I can hardly keep in stock and four more virgin barrels curing, I figure, why not share my booze-aging knowledge with someone other than the Angels?
The barrels I use range from one to five liters, but you can order them up to 20 liters ... The advantages to using mini barrels, other than space of course, are time and money. The smaller, the barrel the quicker its contents will age and mellow.
Simply put, the main difference between a bottom shelf or "well" whiskey, bourbon, scotch, tequila, or wine and a top shelf or "premium" offering is age.
You can purchase a $6 liter of your usual party time rot gut and after aging it in a mini barrel for three months have a spirit worthy of sipping straight. Leave it in that barrel for a full year and you've put as much color and age on it as eight years in a professional full size 55-gallon barrel.
One of my Most Favorite and Well-Received Recipes:
Vanilla tequila: 10 vanilla beans (do not substitute vanilla extract) cut open length wise and stuffed in whole with two liters of Man in Black Plata Tequila. Wait at least four weeks before imbibing, but seven weeks is excellent. The picture shows the color difference between pre-aged Man in Black plata and the seven-week vanilla version.
Go, age, drink and be merry!