Milk Wine - Essentially Sri Lankan

It's that time of the year again! Despite the occasional gloominess and rain in the evenings, mornings are unarguably golden. The air is festive. Oh, you can almost touch it, the sense of happiness permeating the air.

Which gets me to the next point; inspiration. Christmas is a time of celebration and sharing. It has always been so for my family. We are all about celebrating and December is usually the time when there are constant baking, frying and fermenting smells wafting about, getting us all excited in general.

And the Milk Wine. Essentially Sri Lankan, Milk Wine is a seasonal specialty that is slowly fading out of the scene. When the Dutch invaded Ceylon sometime back, some took treasures away from us while a few who fell in love with the island settled and adapted, adding to our culture, many vivid things. As a result, we have some very cool food amongst us such as breudher, the Sri Lankan Christmas cake, milk wine, Lamprais and the like that are specialties of the Burgher community of Sri Lanka.

Keeping to the Sri Lankan spirit, I have used Ceylon Coconut arrack in this recipe. It's super strong and with my family not being much of alcohol people, I have altered the recipe to taper down the hit of arrack.

Ingredients 

• 1L Ceylon arrack (I've heard of people trying this with brandy but I don't think that it would be the same)
• Rind and juice of 3 limes
• Rind of 1 orange
• Large stick of cinnamon
• 12 cloves
• 12 cardamoms 
• 3 teaspoons coarsely ground nutmeg
• 2 cups orange juice
• 2 cups pineapple juice
• 2 cups milk
• 500g sugar
• 1 and half cups of caramelized sugar

Method

- Grind together the lime & orange rinds, the cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and nutmeg, but don't powder. Mix it all with the arrack. Let it steep for 3-4 days. Shake the bottle well twice every day.
- Warm the milk and add the lime juice. Let it stand a while.
- Combine sugar, arrack, pineapple juice, orange juice together. Mix well till sugar dissolves.
- Once cooled, add the caramelized sugar as well. add to it the milk. Mix well.
- Strain with a thick cloth. After a while, strain twice with filter paper.

- Cork the bottles well. Open them up for Christmas!

These pictures were taken after I had only strained it once with the thick cloth, and so, sediments can still be seen as a result. After it has been strained all 3 times (a tedious, tiring task that I am not looking forward to) it will be a beautiful, semi-clear golden colour. It's still yummy though! And quite strong. The spices really come through, sweetened by the sugar and the caramelized sugar that have nicely steeped within the arrack. 

If however, you like the brew stronger, you can add more arrack. The recipe amount is 1 and half bottles of arrack but I've only used one bottle while adding double the quantity of juices. Play around with the quantities. Soften or strengthen it up as desired. It really is that easy. And remember, the longer you keep, the yummier it gets!