Making Your Own Blackberry Basil Rum Liqueur
Making your own Blackberry Basil Rum Liqueur
Ingredients
• 4 cups blackberries
• zest of one lemon
• one large handful of basil
• 3 Cups Light Rum
Directions
Place berries in a large jar and slightly crush with a fork. Add remaining ingredients and tightly secure the lid. Allow to sit for three months in a cool, dark place, shaking occasionally.
At the end of three months, strain your liqueur through a jelly bag. (Find unbleached jelly bags here.) Squeeze to get all the juice out of the blackberries. Add 1 cup of sugar syrup (1 cup sugar heated with 1 cup water, then cooled). Stir to combine. Allow this mixture to mellow 4-6 weeks before drinking.
Did you know that...
• Basil, also known as Saint Joseph’s Wort, is an herb belonging to the mint family.
• Basil is well known for its use in Italian cuisine. It is one of the primary ingredients in pesto sauce. Basil is also commonly included in Indonesian, Thai, and Vietnamese cuisine.
• Basil is used in traditional Tamil and Ayurvedic medicine, which is a form of traditional medicine popular on the Indian subcontinent.
• There are a number of types of basil, which differ in taste and smell. Sweet basil (the most commercially available basil used in Italian food) has a strong clove scent because of its high concentration of the chemical agent eugenol. Alternatively, lime and lemon basil have a strong citrus scent due to their high concentration of limonene.
• Antibacterial properties: Lab studies have demonstrated that basil has antibacterial properties; this may be because of the volatile oils it contains, which include estragole, linalool, cineole, eugenol, sabinene, myrcene, and limonene.
Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com