FLAVOURED SPIRIT: A Manual for Creating Spirited Infusions

Sit back and pour yourself a drink. In this comprehensive handbook, the eager bartender will learn about herbs and spices, distillation, making liqueurs and infusions, cooking with infusions, and enjoying liqueurs. The book offers advice on creating drinks: first, take a spirit (whether that is vodka, gin, whisky or brandy - any distilled spirit), then add some fruit or other flavouring and you have an infusion. It notes that, if sugar is added to sweeten the spirit, this will be a liqueur. Soak in the array of recipes, from transforming vodka into amaretto using almond extract and making a coconut-flavoured rum by combining white rum with dried shredded coconut, to creating absinthe mixing wormwood leaves and spices with vodka. Thanks to the recipes, readers can treat themselves to liquid heaven (also known as chocolate in a glass) by combining chocolate, vanilla and vodka to make a liqueur - the book also suggests using condensed milk and white chocolate in vodka for a sweeter liqueur and introducing two Mars Bars to cream and vodka for a chocolate bar-inspired spirit. Learn that Limoncello may claim to be an ancient drink but it was invented in the 20th century and that, while lemons may grow widely around the Mediterranean and North Africa, they originate from China. Through this book, discover how the hairs on a nettle's leaves may have a vicious sting but the plant can be a natural ingredient in spirits to help with anaemia, osteoarthritis, various allergies and hay fever. Celebrate the power of passion fruit in vodka which can be called 'nectar of the gods' as ancients are believed to have referred to the fruit as such. There are bright images included in the book, with a shot of cocktail-making tools to help the learner, step-by-step photographs of how to make sugar syrup in a pan, and a woodcut from the Middle Ages showing an alchemist's laboratory used to show that distillation was an important art. Start distilling and crack out ice to spice up the drinks cabinet. Paperback, 8.3" x 10.6", colour images, 146pp.