This evening I made Atholl Brose – and, oh my god this is good stuff; forget drinks like Bailey’s and all that artificial crap, this blows them away.
The recipe is on the Wikipedia page, but to paraphrase:
The oatmeal brose is prepared by steeping a volume of porridge oats overnight in three times as much cold water, then straining off the liquid and discarding the oatmeal.
Then blend until smooth:
- 7 parts oatmeal brose
- 7 parts whisky
- 5 parts cream
- 1 part honey
I actually steeped a mug of (Quaker) Porridge Oats in 3 mugs of water for four days, in a tupperware bowl in the fridge, stirring/shaking occasionally to keep it mixed; then after a final shake I strained-off the oats through a fine mesh sieve; the WP page says to use muslin but that’s probably only required if you start with totally sawdusty porridge.
Since this was an experiment I blended it with cooking whisky – Jameson single malt – plus real rich double cream, and a cheap but good-quality clear runny honey. I eyeballed the 7/7/(5+1) proportions using an espresso cup as a small measure – 1 brose + 1 whisky + dollop honey topped-up nearly-full with cream – and whisked the result in a bowl until silky.
The result is fantastic – white, aromatic, creamy, smooth, sweet, unctious. Really there’s no adequate description other than that this is a wonderful drink – pudding / dessertlike, comforting-ish, but without vile oily stickyness.
The potential for variety is enormous – what whisky, what honey, what cream; having established that the process works eventually I want to try a scots heather honey with organic cream and a real malt, rather than this irish muck with the curious spelling.
But for the meantime there’s plenty of raw brose left in the fridge 🙂
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