Today’s cocktail recipe is brought to you by Elsa, one of Dinners With Dan‘s featured contributors!  

It’s Friday once again, and that means it’s time to sit back, relax, and celebrate the end of the work week.  And there’s no way better to enjoy that than with a good drink – and at Dinners With Dan, that means it’s time for another Cocktails with Elsa.  This time she’s sharing with us her recipe for Miles’ Wit: blackberry infused bourbon.  I know I can’t wait to try this!  Enjoy!

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Today we’re going to go on adventure together. Prior to this last week, I had never made blackberry bourbon in my house before, but after trying it in a cocktail at Seattle’s Elysian Brewery, I just had to do something with it for myself!

Miles’ Wit

What You’ll need:

• 1/2 pint blackberries (NOT frozen)
• 1 bottle cheapish whiskey (I used Wilsons, which was TOO cheap)
• Cheesecloth
• a bowl
• sugar
• lillet blanc
• sweet vermouth
• seltzer
• a spoon

How to Make It:

First, the whiskey.

Put the blackberries and sugar into your wide mouthed mason jar, as large as you can get one. Pour whiskey into the mason jar and store in a dark place for 5-7 days, tasting to see if it has taken on the flavor of the blackberries enough to your liking. If you want the whiskey sweeter, you can add more sugar to taste throughout the process.

This is what it looks like when it’s done.

Hold the cheesecloth tightly over a bowl, and strain the blackberry whiskey through the cheesecloth, this is to make sure that none of the teeny bits of berries stay in the whiskey, you don’t want berry chunks. This should still be a smooth drink.

Sadly, unlike with blueberry whiskey (see addendum) the blackberries are too tart to snack on. They will have absorbed a lot of the whiskey, so you’re going to want to make MORE of this than you think you do if you want a full bottle.

Now. Pour yourself a bit of that blackberry whiskey, some seltzer, a bit of lillet blanc, some sweet vermouth & drop an ice cube in.

Enjoy.

The blackberry whiskey is very tart and a bit acerbic, so you definitely want to cut it at least a little bit (I’ve been drinking it straight, but my husband doesn’t like it that way, so you’ll find your own way). The drink is named after Miles Malpractice from Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies. If you’ve read the books, you’ll know why. If you haven’t, well… this is your book recc for the month.

Addendum: I also made a blueberry whiskey, it was really tasty, but I only had a small bit of blueberry so I didn’t make very much. In the end, it was much sweeter than the blackberry whiskey AND the byproduct of blueberries infused with whiskey is DELICIOUS.

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Thanks so much for this cocktail recipe, Elsa!  I can’t wait until your next one!

As always, if you feel inspired to make this delicious recipe, let me know how it goes!  Tweet me, comment below, or post on the Dinners With Dan Facebook page!

Until next time, happy cooking!