To do this, put 200 ml water in a pan with 100 g caster sugar. Heat to dissolve the sugar and then mix in a little at a time. Take care. You can always add but you can’t take away. The world’s most famous gins can be found in the United Kingdomas well as neighbouring Ireland. The booming gin trend has produced a high demand for premium gins produced by distilleries in Canadaand America. Once dissolved, add a little bit of the sugary water at a time to the gin, tasting it as you go, until you have the desired sweetness. Rimmer: Bloody Mary and Caesar lovers should outfit their bar with a handy rimmer for salting and sugaring glassware.

This cranberry gin recipe is the result of a happy accident that showed me way to make Christmas liqueurs faster and better than the traditional recipes I had used in the past. If you want to make this cranberry gin recipe with fresh fruit, you can but you will need more time to let it infuse.But what exactly is cranberry liqueur? Essentially, it’s a type of flavored liquor made by infusing cranberries in alcohol. club soda– you can also use soda water, seltzer, sparkling water or ginger ale interchangeably in this recipe. Store in a cool, dark, cupboard, as you would other drinks. Your cranberry gin will keep well for up to a year (if you exercise restraint!). Hints and tips The cranberry gin will look prettier and pour more easily if you decant it into a bottle. You can sterilize the bottle if you prefer, but as long as it is clean there should be no real need. Cranberry Sauce – Homemade. My cranberry sauce has tart, juicy whole cranberries and a sweet flavoured syrup with plenty of orange. When you make it, reserve a few fresh berries to freeze and use as decoration when you come to bottle the gin.

Cranberries and therefore cranberry juice are full of a very tart, sour and almost bitter taste. However, it’s not unpleasant. It’s quite a refreshing sharp flavor. Gin – Don’t spoil your cranberry gin by choosing something too rough but don’t shell out for anything fancy either. Those fancy botanicals will either be lost or fight against the flavours you are going to add. I like a good dry London gin. Over the years I’ve perfected the recipe, adding spices and leaving the fruit in the gin to infuse for up to a week. I love the resulting cranberry gin, with the balancing warmth of the spice and the zesty twist of orange from the sauce. It gives the gin much greater depth than infusing raw cranberries and saves a lot of waiting. I have taken advice from Sipsmiths (as they know a thing or two about gin) and utilised their sloe gin advice. Here they advise adding the sugar at the end of the infusion process rather than at the start. They say that “ contrary to popular belief, there is very little point in adding sugar at the outset. Saturating the spirit with sugar prevents it from extracting the natural fruit sugars – and other flavours – from the [fruit]“. Preparing to make this drink is very simple. You will first want to fill your highball glass with ice. Step twoMy cranberry festive gin recipe is a lot less fuss than making the more traditional sloe gin. There’s no need to search the hedgerows for fruit, and hardly any waiting for sugar to dissolve and fruit to infuse. I garnished with an orange slice, so it would give you a hint as to what else is in the drink and lime, because cranberry and lime just go well together. Plus plenty of fresh cranberries. You can use frozen cranberries as well, they will just help keep it chilled. Every year, I look forward to the festive period so much, then it turns up and is crazier and busier than the year and Christmas day arrives before we know it and somehow I wish I’d taken it a bit slower and spent more time just being in this season. We all know that I love a good holiday drink. Anything with cranberry or pomegranate is festive and it should be part of all holiday drinks! Cranberry Moscow Mules is a classic that gets a twist for the holidays.

To serve 8, I recommend mixing: 2 ½ cups gin, 1 ½ cups cranberry simple syrup, and ½ cup lime juice. Add 3 cups of tonic water just before serving. I am a big fan of cranberries. They freeze very well so I use them throughout the year. However, as they are in season in winter, I make a lot of cranberry recipes around Christmas and New Year. Normally you have a Vodka Cranberry with Lime. It is a traditional drink that almost everyone enjoys. But you know what else goes really well with cranberry juice? Gin! Serve it straight in a liqueur glass, either at room temperature or chilled. Remember that a little goes a long way.Treat yourself to a festive Cranberry Gin and Tonic (or two, or three) this holiday season! You know that you deserve it.