Strong Italian liqueur with anise aroma has won fans not only for its unusual taste, but also for the way it is served. It is sambuca that is served burning, which produces a stunning visual effect. Real sambuca is quite expensive and belongs to elite alcoholic beverages. But you can try making sambuca at home.
The manufacturing companies keep the recipes for elite alcohol in secret, and in particular, Italian sambuca is one of such national secret recipes, maintaining a complete monopoly on production only in Italy. Several well-known Italian manufacturers produce sambuca in different price categories. The cheapest starts at $ 17 per bottle. This price cannot be called affordable, so why not try making this famous Italian liqueur with your own hands?
Sambuca recipe
For cooking, you will need 700 ml of strong alcohol (96%), 25 g of black elderberry flowers and 100 g of anise. All these ingredients are thoroughly mixed and infused for 5 days in a closed container in a dark place.
Now you need to prepare sugar syrup from 400 g of sugar and 250 ml of water. To do this, the syrup is boiled over low heat and the white foam is periodically removed from the top. When the foam ceases to stand out, the syrup is ready.
After cooling, the sugar syrup is mixed with an alcoholic infusion, another 300 ml of water is added and distilled. In the process of distilling this volume of liquid, 700 ml of sambuca should be obtained. This ratio is the most optimal and you should not try to get more to the detriment of the strength of the drink, as this will significantly impair the taste of the liqueur.
After distillation, sambuca is aged for 24 hours, filtered, and then bottled. For the greatest disclosure of the taste, sambuca should be infused for at least a week, only after that it is recommended to use it.
Ways to use sambuca
Sambuca is served beautifully, which has gained some of its popularity. Three coffee beans are placed on the bottom of the sambuca glass, the lighting is dimmed and the drink is set on fire. After a while, the flame must be extinguished and the sambuca should be drunk warm. Special connoisseurs of sambuca inhale the alcohol fumes from the burning drink. To do this, after extinguishing the fire, a few drops of hot liquor drip onto an inverted glass, drink sambuca and immediately inhale the evaporation from the drops through the nostrils, after which they gnaw the coffee beans.
Sambuca can be consumed as a refreshing, low alcohol drink. A stack of sambuca is poured into a glass of ice water, ice cubes are added and mixed. The drink turns out to be unclear, since sambuca essential oils are poorly soluble in water, but the anise extract perfectly quenches thirst.
