Alcool de vieux garçon

For some reason, I have become well-known for my "special berry alcohol beverage", a treacherous drink that has been known to provoke undesired shirtlessness, extreme reddening of the skin, voluntary loss of memories or inability to operate shoelaces. Today, I will share with all of you the incredible secret recipe of this entertaining drink (you've read about some of the risks, so consider yourself warned of possible disastrous effects):

1. Acquire fresh fruits of the -berry family (rasp-, straw-, blue-, black-, boysen-) or other delicious fruits (peaches, cherries, etc) in season. Quality is the key here, because a flavorless fruit will not improve with age. I recommend going to a pick-your-own farm for added fun.
2. Make a pie first, because you picked too much anyway and it would be a shame to waste all those freshly picked fruits into something you'll have to wait half a year to enjoy.
3. Fill a small bottle with the rest (I like iced tea bottles of maple syrup bottles; you want glass, a large enough neck to stuff the berries in, and a tight cap) to the rim, but without mashing them.
4. Add a single spoon of sugar, white or brown, to help start the fermentation process.
5. Top with your favorite alcohol (vodka, rum, possibly gin or whisky depending on the fruit and your taste, other strong but neutral alcohols can work). As blindness is not a fun side effect for this recipe, choose some good quality alcohol, not the cheap stuff. Cheap booze may pack all sorts of unusual stuff that do strange things given time. Stick to the good stuff.
6. Tighten the cap, write the name of berries (they sometime become hard to identify, especially after a glass), alcohol (it soaks so much of the fruit flavor it's difficult tofind that hint of pepper or sweet cane) and year (most important part) on a piece of paper and tape it on the bottle.
7. Put the bottle in a cool place far from your eyes, and wait a full year.
8. Drink in small quantities among select friends.
   

As you see, the only hard part here is step 7. It takes a solid few months for the fruits to start losing their color and blend their flavor with the alcohol, and then the taste grows in power over time. Wait at least until the year on the bottle doesn't match the one on the calendar, it's worth it. With more time, the alcohol turns sweet and fruity, and the fruits become unbelievably alcoholised. I said it's worth it, so screw that cap back on and put the bottle back on the shelf.