Two years ago I tried to make glogg from a package of mulling spices I got from who knows where. They were probably stale and it was horrible. For the 2010 winter holidays of your choosing, I decided to put a little more effort in so I could possibly share wonderful glogg.

So glogg, gluwhein (with or without umlauts) and spiced mulled wine are pretty much the same thing. At Christkindlmarket in Daley Plaza, it’s served in a boot mug (sometimes imprinted with the previous year) and its called gluwhein. When I find a recipe online that refers to it as glogg and follow that recipe, it is called glogg.

I used a recipe from user Happy Hat on the SomethingAwful forums. I excluded ginger because I did not have any and added grated nutmeg and cinnamon sticks. I played with some ingredients like water, sugar, rum, almond and raisins based on taste. I used a dutch oven on the stovetop to cook the glogg.

I purchased the spices from Whole Foods. I’ve found that stores where you expect groceries to be cheap, like Jewel, are expensive for spices. Cost Plus World Market and Whole Foods are usually cheaper and Whole Foods has some spices in bulk. The spices are the expensive part of glogg so make it in big batches to use all of the odd spices you may not use anywhere else. (Why did I buy so much nutmeg??) For wine, I bought the big jug of merlot table wine. Cheaper the better.

I took a few pictures of the first batch.

The glogg beginds

Adding the non-wine ingredients

Peeking in on simmering glogg

I should have taken more pictures of the bottling process but I was worried about knocking over bottles. A friend brews beer and he let me use some bottles, caps and capper. I sanitized the bottles, filled them with glogg with a funnel, spooned in the raisins and almonds and added a label to describe the ingredients.

The finished product

The ingredients and instructions from the forums:

Traditional Gløgg
Ingredients:

    6 l red wine
    28 whole cardamom (green)
    80 whole cloves
    4 thumb sized pieces of ginger
    4/10 l sugar
    Juice of 2 lemons
    Grated rind of 2 lemons
    Juice of 2 oranges
    Grated rind of 2 oranges
    4/10 l water
    Half a bottle of rum
    500g raisins
    200g chopped, toasted almonds

Will yield about 8 liters

Soak raisins in rum and leave in airtight container in the fridge for at least 48 hours before using.

The next day, pour 1 liter of red wine in a small pot, add spices, sugar, rinds and juices and water – and simmer for 30 minutes covered – put aside, and leave for 24h
Strain the spiced wine and add to the rest of the red wine (in a larger pot), heat to 80 degrees.

Just before serving, add the chopped toasted almonds, and the raisins, and make sure that everybody gets a spoon with their drink to eat up the yummy good raisins.