The mighty black walnut

I've been posting around in other forums and threads about the black walnut trees at the back of my property. I'm going to slowly start adding to the existing food forest elements. I've already got black raspberries going back there along with the BWs themselves. Being in Indiana, I'm keen on trying to get a a couple of paw paw trees going in there. I was thinking a mulberry bush, too, but that might be overkill since they're ubiquitous here in Indiana. I can take a bucket on my bike when I go on the Nickel Plate Trail during mulberry season and ride away with purple hands, a purple mouth, and five gallons of berries.

But since I have been researching BWs, I found that you can make liquor and syrup from early fruit, while the skins are still puckery up until the nuts have just started to form. Here is the specific question I'm driving toward: Has anyone ever made BW liquor with mulberry or black raspberry? Do you simply put the berries in with the fruit and vodka? Would using corn squeezin's make it a BW bourbon? If you've tried both, which do you prefer? And do the berries pair nicely with the BW flavors? Thanks for any help you can provide.

I've been keeping an eye on 'nocino' but I have not tried to make it.

My understanding of the process, is you already have the alcohol and you are just flavoring.

I would recommend your first batch is to follow your BW liquor recipe and try it so you know what your 'base' recipe is. I would then look into introducing the fruit to a smaller test batch and see how long the fruit sitting in the liquor reflects the taste.

I worry that the fruit will need less 'soak' time than the walnuts but I could be wrong. Putting them both in for the same time the first time might end up with funky results.... but you can try!

yup, agreed. nocino, walnut liqueur, is usually made starting with a neutral spirit like vodka.

the ‘steeping’ time for most extracts is the same, so i doubt berries/fruit and walnut would need a different amount of time, but to really understand more about how those flavors go together, i’d probably make separate ones and try different ratios  to see which you like best. also timing could be an issue. in my area, walnuts are prime for making nocino a few weeks before the blackcap raspberries are ripening.

personally, i like the flavor of my homemade nocino enough that i don’t think i would want to add fruit to it.

"Would using corn squeezin's make it a BW bourbon?"
Infusing "corn squeezin's" into vodka, or everclear, would not make it Bourbon, which is first a fermentation of the corn, then a distillation of that alcohol, followed by aging in barrels.

But as others have said, some mixology using nocino and other extracts or liquors such as Bourbon *might* yield something interesting.

Oh, I'd just switch out the vodka in favor of moonshine. But after reading the above comments, I'm going to start from square one and follow the recipe initially for the nocino. Alongside, I'm going to look at recipes for infusing berries by themselves. Maybe somewhere down the road I'll experiment in the glass with different ratios of the two. I appreciate all the feedback.

Kenneth Elwell wrote:"Would using corn squeezin's make it a BW bourbon?"
Infusing "corn squeezin's" into vodka, or everclear, would not make it Bourbon, which is first a fermentation of the corn, then a distillation of that alcohol, followed by aging in barrels.

But as others have said, some mixology using nocino and other extracts or liquors such as Bourbon *might* yield something interesting.

for what it’s worth, this past year when i made nocino i did some taste testing afterward and did end up amending most of the batch with a little bit of homemade extracts of both black walnut kernel and spicebush. there’s definitely plenty of room to play with the recipe.

but the original version really is a good starting point.

I ordered a few spiles for tapping my black walnut trees, and have been researching oddball strategies on processing. I know that you have to keep the sap cold until you boil it, so once I tap the trees and start collecting sap, I'll have to watch the temperature, snowbank it, or bring it in and refrigerate it.

This is going to be a small operation for me. I won't be making gallons of it. Probably a quart or two is all. Once the sap starts to flow, here's my preferred boiling strategy:

Slow Cooker  Syrup Boiling

Yep, the good old crockpot. Slow and easy. After all, isn't one of the 12 permaculture principles to look for small, slow solutions?

j

how many gallons is the slow cooker, though? when i’m really going for it i’ve got the slow cooker (it’s a pretty big 9 qt one), plus all the big pots in the house on the wood stove or stovetop, all going at once until the volume is reasonable to combine them.

any updates? my weather has been pretty decent for sap so we put 7 taps in 6 trees and have been collecting sap for 4 days. going slow with wood stove and slow cooker, got nothing down to syrup level yet, but nice sweet sips here and there. of the 6 trees we tapped, 2 of mine are red maples, and they’re definitely doing the lion’s share of production, both in volume and sugar concentration, but the walnuts sure add good flavor! have brought in maybe 12 or 13 gallons of fresh sap so far, with another few days at least of decent weather for it…

I went out and checked them this morning and nada...I've only tapped two trees so far as sort of a test run. They've got tubing running into sterilized 1 gallon jugs. We had really cold weather here that ended a week ago, and since that its mostly been in the 30s and 40s, except for two days it got into the 50's. I sort of thought that might be enough to get some movement started, but... not yet.

j

greg mosser wrote:any updates? my weather has been pretty decent for sap so we put 7 taps in 6 trees and have been collecting sap for 4 days. going slow with wood stove and slow cooker, got nothing down to syrup level yet, but nice sweet sips here and there. of the 6 trees we tapped, 2 of mine are red maples, and they’re definitely doing the lion’s share of production, both in volume and sugar concentration, but the walnuts sure add good flavor! have brought in maybe 12 or 13 gallons of fresh sap so far, with another few days at least of decent weather for it…