Bulleit Bourbon Sours

[haineux]

1) Buy a bag of lemons at the supermarket. This is a pre-packaged 2 lb bag, for a reduced price. You'll also need sugar, water, a saucepan, a zester or microplane grater, and a quart bottle to put the finished product in

Comments

[matrushkaka]

AWESOME.

[opadit]

botulism

Clostridium botulinum doesn't survive in an environment with a lot of sugar or acid. (This is why you don't have to use a pressure cooker to can jams and jellies -- you can use just a boiling water bath.) What can survive are mold spores and yeasts. Anything short of a scientific cleanroom will have enough yeast cells kicking around that you can make a sourdough bread starter just from letting a bowl of flour and water sit open for a few days. My guess is that a tiny number of yeast cells got in the bottle, and after a while they got really happy from all the sugar.

Probably it's not toxic, but it may adversely affect the taste: you can make wine from grape juice and ordinary bread yeast, but it won't taste like Veuve Clicquot.

[anavolena]

Are you trying to caramelize the sugar and hence the long boil?

When I make simple, I simply (see what I did there!) heat the water until the sugar dissolves. Makes the cool down far quicker and lasts just as long as when I actually brought it to a boil.

[cda]

the sour mix you gave me lasted a LONG time, because I forgot about it, not because it wasn't awesome, which it was, and I drank the hell out of it, like, what, a year after I got it? - and it was GREAT.