Homemade Pomegranate Liqueur

Pomegranates should be as ripe and red as you can get them. Too young, and the flavor may be weak. Too old, and they will, of course, already be rotten. Larger pomegranates are preferred, if only for yield. The units here should really be in ounces, but I didn't measure them carefully. If unsure, err on the side of plenty. For the experiments I performed, we got just under 8 ounces of juice per pomegranate, not counting the pulp.

2 large pomegranates, pods only
1 1/2 cups vodka
3/4 cups sugar
3/8 cups water
1/2 peel, lemon, scraped

Remove pods from pomegranates. Throw away rind and pith. Press out all the juice with a good, sturdy press. Put the resulting juice and pulp in a 1-liter mason jar (any glass jar you can effectively seal works; I use Arc jars from France, and Fidenza jars from Italy). Prepare lemon peel, toss in jar. Add vodka. Seal jar.

Steep two to four weeks, turning it over once a day. Strain and filter. Squeeze the pulp moderately hard, but realize that the harder you squeeze, the harder will be the job of filtering later on. It's a tough split to make.

Now, boil the sugar and water together. Let stand a moment to cool. Add syrup to mixture, and seal quickly. Age four more weeks. Remove, filter again, bottle. You should note that there's a thick haze or sludge on the bottom of your jar, and you will find it incredibly difficult to filter out with anything but a serious wine filter. Instead, you might consider racking the liqueur (siphoning the good liqueur off the top, and discarding the sludge on the bottom). You lose a little bit of liquid along with the sludge, but you sure save yourself a lot of work filtering.

Yield: Total liquid (1.5 cups vodka, .75 cups syrup, 1 cups pomegranate juice) 3.25 cups. Proof: about 35.