Pear Liqueur & Pear Brandy

This weekend I am working on my own Liqueur and flavored Brandies for the holidays. I have so far made Raspberry Brandy with honey (in an attempt to recreate Chambord, we will see how that turns out. I also have made Blueberry brandy and Blueberry liqueur with Vodka. Also this weekend I started a pear brandy and pear liqueur with organic pear juice. I couldn't find a recipe for the liqueur with pear juice so I decided to try and modify a pomegranate recipe with pear juice instead.

The recipe for the pear so far is:

1 1/2 cup of pear juice

1 1/2 cup of vodka or brandy (I am making both)

The pear juice I bought is organic and has some pear pulp in it.

it needs to steep for 2 weeks or more. Shaking once a day.

I will keep a post of information as we go on.

3/6/10

Honestly after waiting several month for this liqueur to be just right they were wonderful, but they vodka infused was really much better, I expected to love the brandy more, but the brandy offered a flavor of it's own, where the vodka was a clean pear flavor. Really, I was surprised as I usually don't like vodka, but after the infusion of several month it really did take on the flavor of the pear and not the vodka at all. I also had made some blueberry vodka, and it was fabulous, I also tried using honey instead of sugar and it gave it a little bitter flavor, the sugar was by far the better option.

I am now in the middle of making Limoncello - I used 10 Meyer's lemon zest and steeped it for 45 days and then strained it and added a simple syrup to it, I tasted it when I added the simple syrup, but personally I didn't think it had enough lemon flavor, I am going to add some fresh lemon juice and see how that works, but I want to add it to a little amount first to see how it goes. If I can get it the way I want it, I will let you know exactly how well it came out.