Home made Mulled Wine

Makes 6 bottles.

A non technical post today, but something that I get asked about this time of year.

For a number of year I have been making my own mulled wine and it has become a bit of a tradition, indeed one company I worked at used to ask me to bring some in for everyone to share. Although the recipe itself is not fixed and gets adjusted yearly (mostly dependent on what I have in the cupboard on the day I make it) it is becoming a bit more standardised. So seems like a good time for me to write it down.

If you are going to follow along with this guide, the ingredients are not too hard to get, but you will need a large pot to mix and heat it. The one I use is 7L and there is plenty of room to spare.

Ingredients:

• 3 Bottles red wine (750ml each)
  Nothing fancy, best to get screw top bottles as you can reuse them.
• 1 Bottle cheap brandy (750ml)
• 1L orange juice
• 1 bottle honey (400g)
• Cinnamon powder (2 teaspoons)
• Ginger powder (1.5 teaspoons)
• Chili powder (1 teaspoon)
• Star Anise (4g)
• Cloves (8g)
• Strong English breakfast teabags (2 teabags)
• Cinnamon sticks (9g)

All the above are rough so feel free to adjust to taste.

Instructions:

Very complicated, so follow carefully.

Put it all in the pot and heat slowly for 10 mins or so until it’s hot but not too hot.

Yup that’s it. The only difficult part is to keep stirring and try not to break the teabags open. Even if you do it’s not a problem. Try not to heat too high as you can burn off the alcohol, some people might like to do this to make a weaker end result, but I tend to like it as it is. My guide to temperature is that I find it hot, but drinkable as it is.

Once finished you can drink immediately, or as I tend to do, let it cool for at least 30 mins and then bottle it reusing the red wine and brandy bottles.

Tip for bottling, filter it using a strainer, but keep the cloves and cinnamon sticks to put a few cloves and a bit of the stick into each bottle. This doesn’t make a lot of difference to the taste, but does make it look better when you open it, or give a bottle as a gift.

Drinking:

If you are having it fresh, then drink a soon as you have heated it. If bottled, then put in a glass container and use a microware to re-heat it, take care not to overheat it though.

UPDATE: Do make sure to strain it before drinking.

Keeping:

Yes you can keep this for a while, a couple of weeks is not an issue and it does not seem to need to be kept chilled.

That’s it, enjoy.