
It sounded easy in theory, but then I wondered how in the world I was going to get the juice out of the pomegranates? I've got a Black & Decker rotating citrus juicer that works great on grapefruit, but I didn't think it would work all that well on a pomegranate. The rinds of pomegranates doesn't taste very good, and the rotating juicer would probably get too much of it into the juice. Dr. Randall said he used a manual fruit press.
Then I remembered, my dad had given me an old manual juicer for my birthday. It really hadn't worked very well on oranges or grapefruits, so I put it away and forgot about it. Would it work on pomegranates? It did! I was able to juice around 10 small pomegranates in just a few minutes, and wound up with around one cup of cloudy juice. The juice tasted good, but it definitely had a bitter pithy aftertaste from the rind. I left it in the fridge for a few days, and all the bitter tasting pith and sediment settled to the bottom. I was then able to pour off the nice clear juice, and strain the dregs through a coffee filter.
The juice by itself tasted very very good, although a bit tart. To the one cup of juice I added one cup of vodka, and around 1/4 cup of 1:1 sugar-water solution. The result is a very nice little drink, that while certainly stronger than the beer and cider I'm used to, is quite delicious. The more you drink, the better it tastes. Special thanks to Dr. Randall for sharing his recipe. I'll definitely be making more of his cordial next year.