Root diversion

I had a bottle of Root this autumn and loved it.  Since then I've been hankering to make something like it, and today I gave it a start.

Per the label, Root's ingredients are birch bark, smoked black tea, cinnamon, wintergreen, spearmint, clove, anice, orange, lemon, nutmeg, allspice, cardamom and sugar.  I was able to get the birch bark, wintergreen, and spearmint at Brooklyn Homebrew.  (I love that place.)  The other spices I had.  I bought some lapsang souchong for the smoked tea.

Looking at different sources I decided I should be scared of the tea and not let it steep for more than 24 hours.  Everything else I think I'll keep in for a week and taste.  Maybe I'll let it go another week after that.

I chatted with Patty at Slope Cellars and decided to go with our old friend Spirytus rather than a vodka.  Spirytis is +75% alcohol, and I wanted to end up at something like 40%.  I'm also inclined to sweeten the drink directly with sugar rather than with a simple syrup, so I needed to dilute the booze directly.  I did that with filtered water, bringing it down to between 35% and 40% alcohol.

I started two batches, 12 ounces each.  The only differences between the two are the quantities of tea and cloves.  Let's see what happens.

The ingredients

The A & B jars

The list of ingredients in each jar

2012 Muscat racked - day 96 (Jan 5, 2013)

Happens very year, doesn't it?  We want to rack the Muscat early and bottle it early, and before we know it it's January and the only prior racking was to get it off the gross lees.

Went from 5+5+5+growler to a liter shy of 3+3+3.  So we topped it off with 750 ml of 2011 Muscat and the remainder from an unlabled bottle: I'm guessing 2010 (and the remainder of that bottle will go into taralli tomorrow morning).

Color's good.  Will test later in the day and post the results here.  Didn't really tast yet either - sleep was still in my month.

Should we fine?  I think the group should decide in a week or so, with the notion of doing it soon and then racking & bottling February and March.