Monastic Melissa Spirits

Last evening there was an impressive storm, and we had some major rains that washed the garden down.

Since the lemon balm was about as clean as it was going to get, we harvested enough to make half the recipe (see last blog for more information).

Basically you need LOTS of lemon balm leaves - We halved the recipe to 100 grams.... Stuffed them in a jar that can be sealed tightly. Mom is my hand model.

Its a lot of leaves (3 1/2 ounces).
We found pouring part of the brandy, a bit at a time, helped compact the leaves.

Still stuffing.
Pour more brandy as needed to flatten the leaves.

Til there's not a drop left. We actually were a bit short covering the leaves. The pint didn't make two cups that we needed, so we should have used less leaves.
So we shook the jar. Not really. I just liked this "accident" picture.

We did tip the jar a bit to get things all soaked. It is very dense in there.

And closed the jar tightly. After taking the picture, we put it in a darker spot. The recipe didn't say so. We just felt it would preserve the color better.

This is the jar about five hours in. The alcohol does a nice job of keeping the leaves bright green.

See you in ten days.