This months spicy Mixology Monday is hosted by CraigH at the Tikidrinks and Indigo Firmaments, thanks for hosting! At this time of the year Sweden is totally drenched in various gloggs or mulled wines. Its glogg everywhere you turn your head in a myriad of flavors, and indeed its nice to drink a warm spicy glogg when its dark and cold outside for most of the time. So to me this months MxMo theme is perfect for making a homemade glogg with spices.

SPICY GLOGG

The word glogg originally means “to heat up” as the original glogg was made with heated pure spirit. On top of a bowl with spirit or cognac and spices a mesh was placed. On top of the mesh was a sugartop. The spirit was set alight and the sugar melted down into the bowl.

The main ingredients are (usually red) wine, spices such as cinnamon, cardamom and cloves, sugar or molasses, and optionally also stronger spirits such as vodka, akvavit, rum or brandy. The mixture is prepared by heating, but it is not allowed to boil in order for the alcohol not to evaporate.

Glogg is generally served with raisins, almond slivers, and gingerbread, and is a popular warm drink during the Christmas season. Our shops are as mentioned already, drenched in various gloggs, and lot of it are low alcohol gloggs sold in the supermarkets. This tradition came to Sweden from the German speaking parts of Europe during the middle ages.

A collection package of five years Blossa gloggs.

2003 – Pomerans
2004 – Winter apple
2005 – Cloudberry/Armagnac
2006 – lingonberrry/Juniper
2007 – Havttorn/Cinnamon

Today one of the most popular commercial brand of glogg is Blossa.They also make a special yearly edition in a very limited quantity with a new flavor every year. This yearly flavored gloggs are so popular that the bottles in the shop are very soon finished. This years glogg is flavored with blueberry and its this glogg that was the prize in the cocktail garnish contest won by Chris from Rookie Libations. As I´m writing this i doubt there`s one single bottle available of it anymore.

Its also common to make homemade glogg using the spirit method or by spicing a red wine that may also have additional spirits added like cognac or rum etc. There are many various recipes for homemade glogg, some takes longer than others.

As glogg contains a lot of spices i decided to make my own glogg for the first time for this MxMo, it comes very timely, the theme spice (lovely) and its december.

I wanted to base my glogg on a red wine that i spice up with some dried spices and a dash of spice tincture and then adding some old Caribbean dark rum.

SPICED GLOGG

1 bottle

0.5 dl raw sugar
0.5 dl molasses
1.dl water
25 cl red wine
10 cl dark rum

Spices: dried orange peel, 1 star anise, a sliced piece of fresh ginger, vanilla bean. Dash spice tincture (cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, steeped in some overproof rum for 2 weeks)

To accompany the glogg: peeled sweet almonds and raisins.

Warm sugar and water and make a simple syrup, add the dried orange peel, ginger, vanilla bean and star anise. When the sugars are dissolved, take off the heat and add rum and spice tincture. Cool, strain and bottle in a clean bottle. Preferably leave over night to sit.

Serve warm in small glasses or cups with some peeled sweet almonds and raisins in the glass.

Usually with glogg something to snack on is served, its nuts, raisins etc. We recently got a very interesting glogg here called Xmas Delight which is flavored with dark cocoa, cherry, vanilla and mint.

So i took a bunch of peanuts and raisins and caramelized them with this glogg. Its really simple, just throw the nuts in a pan, add some glogg, maybe 2 oz and get it going until its evaporated.

Then cool and dry.

Another nice invention: mix this dark cocoa glogg (or a homemade) with El Dorado 12, drink it room temp, yummy..

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