Home Made Christmas - Mulling Syrup

The smell of mulled wine is one of my favourite things about Christmas, warmed up, sat in front of the wood burner all snuggled up, forget summer sunshine, winter cosy days is what it's all about!

I love Christmas time and I really enjoy seeing all the presents wrapped up under the tree ready to share but I find that comes with a certain amount of stress trying to think up what to give.  I like to go for something a little unusual and crafty if I have the time rather than the traditional chocolate (not that I ever mind receiving chocolate so don't worry if that's what you've got me) and this year I decided to go for some scrummy mulling syrup. It worked out around £8-9 per gift once you've brought the bottle, ingredients, a bottle of wine or cider to go with it and a present bag to put it in so not necessarily saving money by making it yourself but lovely to give something a bit different. It does work out cheaper per bottle if you make a big batch as you only have to buy ingredients like the All Spice once over as you get loads.


The recipe I used can be found here.  All the ingredients are simple to find in the supermarket except for whole Allspice, I've got to be honest I always thought that allspice was a spice mix rather than a whole spice!  I brought mine on line from this website, it arrived really quickly and the delivery was free which was great as it kept the cost down.

Preparation - Sourcing the bottles and sterilising

I wanted to source some really nice bottles to present the syrup in, in Norfolk we are fortunate to have an excellent Homebrew shop and I found these lovely but not too expensive bottles there, if you're more organised than me and don't leave it until the last minute though you can probably get some on line without any problem or try somewhere like Ikea.

The recipe recommends sterilising them by  putting them in the oven but I wasn't sure how this would work with the flip top bottles, I imagine you can take the seals off so that they're safe to go in the oven however it seemed easier just to use some of the sterilising powder my husband uses for his home brewing, it's easy to find at shops such as Roys, Wilkos, any shop that sells homebrew equipment or if not then on line. Rather than making up a whole lot and pouring it into the bottles I found it easier to put about 1/8 teaspoon into each bottle then fill them up with water.

It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas

 


One of the best things about making this syrup is the gorgeous smell that fills the house.  I did 10 times the recipe so needed 2 big saucepans full.

Bottling Up

 

The recipe just recommends running the mix through a sieve, I removed most of the large pieces with a ladle first to make it less messy then ran it through the sieve.  This worked absolutely fine but since I had a  a straining bag handy I pour it through this to get any smaller bits that were left out, this is not essential but if you happened to have a muslin that you'd use for jam making handy you could use that.  A funnel was really handy as well for making less mess but once again not essential especially if you have better hand eye co-ordination than I do! I emptied the sterilising fluid out of the bottles, rinsed then and filled each with 400mls of the syrup. 

The Finished Product

I took the photo while they were still warm so they're a little steamed up.  Admittedly they look a little dull but once brightened up with the instruction label on some nice ribbon and put in a nice present bag with bottle of red wine (no need to spend a lot on the wine as once it's been made into mulled wine you wouldn't know) or cider I think they make a really lovely gift and help share a little Christmas magic, though unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the finished presents!