Fortified wine

[davidscottuk1247]

I know that brandy is the usual spirit added if wanting to fortify wine, as in sherry, but I'm wondering what experience people have of using other spirits (?).

 

[Dutto]

I've used a tincture of Chillies to warm up a beer by marinading the Chillies in Vodka for a few weeks instead of adding Chillies to the wort during fermentation.

My only mistake was to put too many Chillies into too little Vodka! The addition has to be with a very small hypodermic syringe (just 1ml of vodka to 1 litre of beer) to finish up with a palatable Chilli Beer; which is an acquired taste in itself.

 

[Victor Churchill]

Off the 'fortified wine' topic here, going off on chillie beer...
Once I had a 'chili beer' in a Tex Mex restaurant in Bournemouth and quite enjoyed it. It had a chillie sitting in the bottle. On my next Coopers Cerveza brew I dropped a dried chillie in each bottle as I bottled it. The first couple I had were pleasantly warm. Then noticeably hot. Then rather too hot. Then unbearable - I ended up with a couple of bottles ... I swear they were glowing malevolently as if radio active, just radiating "Go on, if you think you're hard enough". The longer the chillie stays in the bottle the hotter it gets!

I haven't tried doing that again.

(p.s. How do you spell chili beer anyway? Chili or chilie? Neither looks right.!)

 

[Resilient Cat]

Chilli!

 

[Resilient Cat]

Going back to the topic though, it might be a dreadful thing to say, so I'M SORRY in advance; if brandy is just aged neutral grape spirit, you could probably try and age some vodka with oak chips (there's a way of getting it to age faster by making it warm and cold every week or so) and give that a try? Or just try dumping a load of unaged vodka (I SAID I'M SORRY) in and aging the heck out of it?