Post #269145 by KuKuAhu on Tue, Nov 28, 2006 8:32 AM

Somewhere there's a thread in here where I described making grenadine from whole pommegranates. It was very good, but tedious and as Skip mentions, messy. When you use the whole fruit and grind it up, you get some tannins and bitterness in the finished product that really make a very "adult" and full tasting grenadine. But for the effort and cost it is hardly worth it for everyday use.

So my goal since then has been to simply put the pomm back in grenadine. I have used cooked down Pom Wonderful juice as well as other brands, and that works okay. It takes a while to reduce, and the cost is again a bit high per finished bottle.

A taste test comparison between factory grenadine with a low pomm content (or none at all) is certainly night and day. There is simply not one brand that even remotely compares to real pomm flavor and color.

So instead of grinding, mashing, boiling, reducing, etc..

..you can just buy pommegranate concentrate and add it to any decent store brand grenadine (but not Rose's or that thin watery Stirrings stuff) or to sugar syrup. Pomm concentrate is nothing more than cooked down pomm juice. So when you add it to sugar syrup, you get a very high pomm content per finished bottle.

My own preference is to use roughly 2 parts Top Shelf brand grenadine or Torani brand pomm syrup, and add roughly 1 part pomm concentrate and just a little white rum to preserve it. All you do is funnel these ingredients into a fifth bottle and shake it up. The combo of the red food color with the real pomm color is just blood red and rich, and the flavoring mixed with real pomm is top notch.

But sugar syrup works just as well really.

Real pommegranate flavor is so very different from flavor additives both natural and otherwise that there is simply no way to go back to pomm free stuff or low pomm content after that. And luckily the bottle and shake method is so stupid easy that it is unlikely that anyone could reasonably excuse themselves form trying this method based upon the effort required.

Now, a bottle of pommegranate concentrate will set you back about $15, but when you can get around 2-3 fifths or so of solid product out of one bottle, it makes sense.

A fifth of grenadine lasts a while in my house.

Ahu