I had a post not too long ago about a 1 liter barrel I ordered online and now as promised I’ll tell you what I put in it the other day.
   The directions say to prime the barrel for about 5 days with warm water, I’ve let the water sit for a month or so now as life has a way of slapping you around and making sure you can’t do what you want all the time.  Thinking ahead to what I’m going to age I went aisle shopping at the grocery store.  For about a buck I bought (among other fun things) a can of whole cranberry sauce.  When I got home I opened it up to see what I was dealing with.  The ingredients say: cranberries, high fructose corn syrup, and water.  Most of the can is the high fructose corn syrupy gel that the whole cranberries are in.  I ran cold water into the can and separated most of the whole cranberries.  I can hear some of you now thinking “I would have waited and used real cranberries…” well I don’t want to wait and everyone likes the canned cranberry sauce better anyway.  I measured about 4-5 oz and threw them in a food processor to be shredded.  Grabbing a bottle of Tanquery gin I emptied the barrel of the priming water, stuffed the shredded cranberries into the barrel and filled it with the bottle of gin.  My thinking is that when fall comes here before we all know it I’ll have a barrel aged cranberry gin that I can either make into bitters or use in a cocktail, or both.  I’ll keep you up to date and like the article says this doesn’t really have to be in the barrel for more than a month, month and a half so I can do multiple batches before the end of September hits.  Enjoy the weather, Prost. 

Article By: Mark Sexauer