I just finished bottling the 2009 batch of Nocino di Bobo. Nocino has a long history, and requires a bit of time to make properly.
Start with your green walnuts. They tend to be ready in the late spring. Bash them up and put them in a big jar with a fair bit of booze — this year I used about 50 walnuts and 3 fifths of Everclear, in a nice square 3 liter glass jar. Add some spices – from what I gather one usually starts with cinnamon and clove, but I’ve tried juniper, star anise, mace, vanilla, etc.
Leave the jar of nuts and booze sealed up, outside, in the sun, for at least 40 days. This year I had trouble finding time to do the bottling, and so it sat for months and months… From June to almost the end of December. It certainly doesn’t need to sit that long, and whether it even needs 40 days is debatable as well, but why reinvent the wheel?
Go out and get a bunch of 375ml clear glass bottles from the homebrew store… Of course, you can use whatever size and shape you want, but watch out, bottles can get expensive quickly! If you got to Rainbow you’ll pay $4-$6 for a cute flask-like bottle, but 375’s are about $1.10 each by the dozen if you just get plain bottles and “T” stoppers, those are a quarter apiece.
When you’re ready to bottle, make some simple syrup (1:1 sugar and water), and sterilize your bottles (I use iodine solution, also from the homebrew store). Remember to let the syrup cool before you use it – you can easily f**k the whole thing up if you don’t. So, chill.
Get a big bowl or pot that will hold at least 6 quarts. Put a cheesecloth or an old pair of nylons over the top of the bowl, open the glass infusion jar and strain the walnut-infused booze in there. It will be a lovely greenish-black color, and should smell wonderful. If it’s doesn’t smell good at this point, give it to a friend and go back to drinking beer.
Now you have about 2.3l of infused booze in the bowl. This time I made 8 cups of simple syrup (that’s 8 cups sugar, 8 cups water), which made about 3 quarts in final volume (I think). Or maybe I made 12 cups syrup. In any case, I only added 8 cups (2 quarts) to the infused booze. Anyhow, 8 cups is 1.9 liters, so now you have 4.2l and then I added another quart of plain water, not wanting the whole thing to end up too sweet. So now (by later calculation) you have a bit more than 4.5l of infused, diluted nocino in your bowl, which is good, because a dozen-box of those 375ml bottles will hold 4.5l
Fill your bottles, stop them up, put them back in the box, and put it on a shelf in a dark, cool place for a YEAR. That’s right, you don’t get to open those bottles until this time of year, the following year — around Christmas time. Give 11 of them away and keep one for yourself. Note that you also get to drink whatever was leftover in the bowl during the bottling process. I like to keep that extra bit in the freezer and then compare it after a year to what the stuff out of the bottle tastes like.
By the way, I tasted a bit of last year’s Cin/Clo/Juniper/Star Anise nocino tonight and it wasn’t bad. Better than the Cin/Clo/Mace/Vanilla version, but still too much spice. I’m hoping the 2009 will be simpler and let more of the walnut through, although I suspect I overspiced this batch in the end as well.
