Anyone familiar with this procedure? I got some dried sweetgale from a friend that wanted me to soak it in liquor for at least a week. He did the same thing a while ago and got very drunk from his brew. But he wasn't sure if his gleeful state that night was due to the sweetgale or just the alcohol.
Northern Europeans (perhaps others too) have used sweetgale to flavor alcohol beverages for at least a thousand years. It's still used today to flavor schnapps in (at least) Scandinavia, and in England they make ale with it.
I had some left over vodka (40% vol.) so I poured it in an air-tight container and filled it with catkins (and a few leaves, maybe 70:30 ratio) from sweetgale (Myrica gale).
After two weeks of sitting in the dark in an air tight container at room temperature I filtered the alcohol through a sieve and then filtered it once more through a cloth to remove the small plant-bits.
The result:


This is what it usually looks like if made by a distillery:

My result is similar to flavored snaps. It smells very fresh and summery (somewhat complicated smell), and tastes a bit like caramel and something I can't put my finger on. Of course, there's the taste and smell of sweetgale. If I take a large waft it stings my sinuses more than vodka normally would. I'd upload a smell-file if it were possible There are no noticeable legs on this concoction as there would be on wine or finer liquors.
Tonight I'm going to bring it out with me and see what the people think 
Here's an article on psychoactive beer http://www.hogtownbrewers.org/news/2000jul/psychoactiveBeer.html In it you can read:
Quote:
Sweet gale, also called Bog Myrtle, or the Badge of the Campbells, is in the same family as bayberry (Myrica cerifera) ... It has scores of medicinal uses (good for boils, pimples, ague, what have you). It supposedly "revives the spirit, quickens the mind, and strengthens the nerves", which sounds pleasant enough. It was also used as a diuretic in treatments for gonorrhea. (Ah, the useful information one finds on the Internet.) The leaves were used in France as an emmenagogue and an abortifacient, which makes it a pretty scary plant to me. (If I had two X chromosomes, I'd probably leave it the hell alone.) Odd Nordland, Norwegian brewing historian (his real name), considers that sweet gale may still be used in beer making in parts of western Norway.
Any thoughts on this, or experience with this...?
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