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