{"id":25849,"date":"2015-09-23T05:34:05","date_gmt":"2015-09-23T10:34:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/?p=25849"},"modified":"2015-09-23T05:48:04","modified_gmt":"2015-09-23T10:48:04","slug":"unicorn-tears-liqueur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/?p=25849","title":{"rendered":"Unicorn Tears Liqueur"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"UnicornThe intarwebs were abuzz recently with the announcement of Firebox’s new Unicorn Tears Liqueur<\/a>. It’s a cute gimmick: A gin-based liqueur with silver flakes suspended in it, a tear-shaped label with a unicorn design, and a product page which assures you that “Many, many unicorns were harmed in the making of this beverage.”<\/p>\n

Unfortunately it’s $62 a bottle, and I don’t know if it’s that<\/em> cute of a gimmick.<\/p>\n

This is doubly true because silver (and gold) flakes are widely available and homemade liqueur is a snap to make. The flakes are used to prettify food and can be found at gourmet shops, stores that sell cake-decorating supplies, or at Amazon<\/a>. Make sure you get actual metal flakes instead of edible “metallic glitter,” because that type may dissolve in liquid.<\/p>\n

Homemade liqueur involves little more than infusing an ingredient(s) of your choice in a neutral spirit like vodka, then adding sugar syrup. There’s a discussion of the general method here<\/a>, and if you google “homemade liqueur recipes” you’ll find zillions of different ideas: This<\/a> and this<\/a> are good jumping-off points. You’ll probably want to choose a recipe that results in something fairly colorless to show off the metal flakes, so coffee-based mixtures are probably out; unicorns don’t strike me as the kind of creature to have caffeine jitters anyway.<\/p>\n

You’ll also want to choose a clear bottle to show off the pretty metallic liquid; I like bottles with swing-type lids<\/a>, but if you want to wax-dip the tops for extra fanciness you’ll probably want to choose something with cork stopper more similar to this type<\/a> so the wax seal will be nice and smooth.<\/p>\n

You can buy wax meant for sealing beer and wine bottles at brewery-supply stores or online; Kings Wax<\/a> and Blended Waxes<\/a> have nice selections. However, a lot of home brewers use a DIY mixture of melted crayons and hot glue for a cheap, good-looking result. Bertus Brewery<\/a> and Brew on a Budget<\/a> have instructions for that.<\/p>\n

For the label, you can create something appropriately unicorn-y on the computer and print it out. You could also stencil (or freehand, if you’re ambitious) the bottle using glass paint<\/a>, or get really fancy and etch<\/a> the bottle.<\/p>\n

For added decoration you could twist a bit of polymer clay into a miniature unicorn horn, poke a hole in the bottom end, and tie it to the neck of the bottle with ribbon.<\/p>\n

You can also branch out into liqueurs “made” from other mythical creatures: Do a reddish cherry liqueur mixed with gold flakes and give the Twilight<\/i> fan on your gift list a bottle of Vampire Squeezin’s. Caraway-flavored Troll Tears or rose-infused Elf Sweat might be amusing as well.<\/p>\n

For about the same price as a single bottle of the retail stuff, you could make a whole lot of pint-sized homemade versions as gifts. And it’s way easier than finding a unicorn and making it cry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The intarwebs were abuzz recently with the announcement of Firebox’s new Unicorn Tears Liqueur. It’s a cute gimmick: A gin-based liqueur with silver flakes suspended in it, a tear-shaped label with a unicorn design, and a product page which assures you that “Many, many unicorns were harmed in the making of this beverage.” Unfortunately it’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doom-it-yourself"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25849"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25896,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25849\/revisions\/25896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}