Beech Leaf Noyau

I found a recipe for the beech leaf noyau last year, a gin based liqueur which I'd never heard of before. I've since found out that it's quite an old countryside recipe and isn't as rare as I'd thought. How do I not know about this tipple?!  By the time I found the recipe, it was too late to pick the beech leaves - they need to be picked very young, at the beginning of April.  I put out feelers to try and find out who might have access to some beech leaves and got the word from Ed and Chris in Aylsham that they had a beech leaf hedge. Marvellous!

So, in the middle of April, I received a text from Ed to say the beech leaves were ready - which meant only one thing.  Housework and gardening abandoned while I hot footed it up to Aylsham with my carrier bags at the ready, to be swopped out for empty ice cream cartons by Christine!   The recipe called for 400ml of beech leaves, but I don't think I had that much - simply because I didn't want to strip Ed and Christine's hedge of leaves just as spring was bursting out all over.  So the amount I did get was divided into two, put in the bottom of my two kilner jars and then doused in gin for six weeks.

Here are the two noyau kilner jars, nestling next to the blackberry brandy and sloe gin which is probably well ready to bottle up now!

Once I'd strained the beech leaves off the liquid, the clear gin had turned into this beautiful amber colour - I thought it might look a bit more like wee because of the colour of the leaves, but I was left with this instead. The aroma (and taste - of course I had to try a little bit!) was quite herby though, which you would expect from having all that greenery soaking away.

Next up was to boil up water with sugar - so that the sugar all dissolved - which was then left to cool down to pour into the gin.  At this point, it got a bit tricky - it was very apparent that two bottles weren't enough for all the liquid, especially given that I hadn't mixed the brandy in yet either.

And then the brandy went in too. And the whole lot is all ready to drink - woohoo! Again, I tried a little snifter and it's blinking good stuff! It's supposed to be drunk as a summer cocktail, over ice, either neat or with a mixer.  Considering there's a bottle of gin and a bottle of brandy within this concoction, it didn't feel very overwhelming - although that would depend on how much you have. It tastes a little like Pimms - it definitely feels like a summer drink.

I'm off to Andy's next weekend so will get the verdict then. In the meantime, I'm already so impressed, that I have already put it in my diary to ring Ed and Christine at the beginning of April next year to invite myself over for more foraging!