witcher potions

Hello and welcome! This blog follows a project I've been working on for a while - making cocktails based on potions from The Witcher 3. Rather than focusing solely on emulating the look of the in-game potions, I've broken them down by their ingredients. Some ingredients are real and edible plants/fruits/herbs. Others are real and toxic, and some of them have no direct real-world counterpart. The ingredient index will lead you to my explanations for what I've used for each ingredient (and why). Enjoy! My non-witcher creations can be found on instagram @flora.minus.fauna

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Index

Ingredient List

Potions

Enhanced Black Blood

Killer Whale

Superior White Honey

Superior Blizzard

Superior Swallow

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Superior Swallow

2 oz calendula-infused vodka*

1 oz myrtle-crowberry simple syrup**

1/2 oz lime juice

4-5 drops barberry tincture***

3 oz cranberry juice

Pinch of blue edible glitter

Tonic

Combine vodka, simple syrup, lime juice, cranberry juice, and glitter into a shaker. Shake and then strain liquid into glass. Add tonic, then top with barberry tincture.

*combine ~2tbsp dried or fresh calendula petals and ~4oz of your favourite vodka in a jar. Let sit for 4-5 days, shaking occasionally.

**combine ½ c water and ½ c sugar in a small saucepan. Add 1-2 tablespoons dried myrtle leaves and ~1 tbsp crowberry jam. Heat on medium-high until sugar is dissolved, then turn off heat and let it sit covered for a  few hours. I got the crowberry jam from Urta Islandica, along with some other lovely treats. They ship internationally!

***start with around 2oz of 151 proof spirit and add 1-2 tbsp dried barberry. Let it infuse for 2-3 weeks, shaking daily. Strain, bottle, and done!

I have no idea how I managed to get this colour from the ingredients, but I was so excited about it! Once again taking creative license with the fauna, and using cranberry juice for drowner brain. Enjoy! xx

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Superior Blizzard

2 oz sea buckthorn-inflused gin*

2/3 oz myrtle-calendula simple syrup**

1/4 oz lemon juice

3-4 dashes fee brothers foam OR 1 egg white

4-5 drops mossy mushroom bitters***

Pinch of blue spirulina

Pinch of green edible glitter

Tonic

Combine gin, simple syrup, lemon juice, fee foam, blue spirulina, and glitter in a shaker. Shake with ice for ~1 minute and strain liquid into glass. When there is only foam left in the shaker, add mossy mushroom bitters and shake for a few more seconds before straining the foam into the glass. Top with tonic.

*combine ~1tbsp dried sea buckthorn berries and ~8oz of your favourite gin in a jar. Let sit for 4-5 days, shaking occasionally.

**combine ½ c water and ½ c sugar in a small saucepan. 2-3 tablespoons dried calendula petals and 1-2 tablespoons dried myrtle leaves. Heat on medium-high until sugar is dissolved, then turn off heat and let it sit covered for a  few hours.

***I don’t have exact measurements for this, but here’s the basic gist; Start with 151 proof spirit and add a 10-mushroom powder blend, oakmoss, usnea, and cedar wood shavings. Let it infuse for 2-3 weeks, shaking daily. Strain, bottle, and done!

I’m really excited about the way these mossy mushroom bitters turned out! For some reason I just love anything that tastes like a wet forest. The sea buckthorn and myrtle give this a nice bright flavor to balance out the wet forest undertone xx

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Enhanced Black Blood

Enhanced Black Blood

1.5 oz vodka

2 oz pomegranate juice

1/4 oz butterfly pea flower simple syrup*

6-7 drops mushroom chai bitters**

*combine ½ c water and ½ c sugar in a small saucepan. Add 1/4c to 1/2c dried butterfly pea flowers. Heat on medium-high until sugar is dissolved, then turn off heat and let it sit covered for a few hours.

**I don’t have an actual recipe for this, I just sort of threw things together to see what would happen. I used a 151 proof spirit and added a 10-mushroom powder blend, cardamom, ginger, clove, cinnamon, coriander, anise, and allspice, and gentian (all dried). I let it infuse for a few weeks, strained it, and bottled it up. 

To help get this as dark as possible, I used Blavod black vodka as the base spirit. The pomegranate juice stands in for ghoul’s blood (couldn’t get my hands on any of the real stuff, for some reason). Cranberry juice would also be really tasty in this! I cheated a little bit with the mushrooms and used a blend, but it does include mushroom of life, which I’m using for sewant. Enjoy! xx

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Rubedo / Vermilion / Quebrith / Rebis / Vitriol / Aether

Edible glitters for some added flair~

Rubedo - red glitter, black glitter, beetroot powder Vermilion - gold glitter Quebrith - green glitter, gold glitter Rebis - green glitter, black glitter, green spirulina Vitriol - mint glitter, blue glitter Aether - blue glitter, black glitter

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Superior White Honey

Superior White Honey

2 oz honeysuckle vodka

3/4 oz myrtle-date simple syrup*

1/2 oz fresh lemon juice

4-5 spritzes butterfly pea-lemon zest hydrosol**

Tiny pinch of blue edible glitter

*combine ½ c water and ½ c sugar in a small saucepan. Add in 1-2 dried dates and 3-4 tbsp dried myrtle leaves. Heat on medium-high until sugar is dissolved, then turn off heat and let it sit covered for a few hours.

**I used this guide to make a hydrosol with 3c dried butterfly pea flowers and around 1 tbsp fresh lemon zest.

My initial plan for this one was to infuse the vodka with butterfly pea, but here’s the problem - white honey is... not dark purple. Or blue. Or pink. Butterfly pea flowers are SO FULL OF COLOUR, y’all. I tried a very quick infusion but even then it was just too much. I do think I’ll end up with some recipes that don’t look like their in-game counterparts, but I want to find a way to avoid that as much as possible. So, infusing the vodka is out. Simple syrup also comes out very colourful. That’s out. I’ve been interested in trying to make hydrosols for a few years but it always felt intimidating. I happen to have an excess of butterfly pea flowers, though, so I decided to give it a go. It was honestly so easy! You’ll probably see hydrosols pop up again xx

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Killer Whale

Killer Whale

1 oz vodka

1/2 oz date + sea buckthorn simple syrup*

2 oz fresh-squeezed mandarin juice**

*combine 1/2 c water and 1/2 c sugar in a small saucepan. Add in 1-2 dried dates and 1-2 tbsp sea buckthorn berries. Heat on medium-high until sugar is dissolved, then turn off heat and let it sit covered for a few hours. **I just happened to have mandarins, but any orange citrus fruit could work just as well, as long as it’s fresh!

I’m really excited to have all my research done so I can start MAKING things. Killer Whale is the simplest recipe. I used vodka as our base Dwarven spirit (though this could work with just about any other clear spirit), and for the balisse fruit and buckthorn I made a simple syrup. I don’t have specific replacements for most of the fauna ingredients, so taking some creative license, I decided to use mandarins for the drowner tongue, because.. if you peel them they’re slimy and gross... and they’re orange xx

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Sewant mushroom → Almond mushroom

Not a real type of mushroom as far as I can tell. Interestingly, in-game it looks a lot more like a puffball mushroom than the in-game puffball mushroom.

In-game Polish “szytnaćce,” which doesn’t seem to be a real thing.

For this one, I just grabbed a random edible ‘shroom, Agaricus subrufescens, aka almond mushroom or mushroom of life.

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Ranogrin → Horsetail

I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out what this could be. It looks kinda like a small evergreen shrub/the harvested version looks like a pine bough, but when you pick the plant in-game it looks like multiple plants, not just one shrub. Eventually ended up going through a photo album of native Polish plants and decided that the game version looks a lot like horsetail (specifically Equisetum arvense).

In the Polish books, it’s called “ra-nog” and in the english translation it’s “scarix” (could they be thinking about carex/sedges?).

“The modest yellow-gray brushes peering from chests deeply sunken into the ground revealed scarix, a root with powerful and universal medicinal qualities.” (The Voice of Reason 6).

The only sedge/carex I can find with medicinal properties is sand sedge.

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Crow’s eye → Crowberry

In Polish, it’s called “wronie oko.” As far as I can tell, that literally translates to crow’s eye, but “Kulczyba wronie oko” is Strychnos nux-vomica (the strychnine tree). The fruit is edible, the seeds and bark contain strychnine.

This is a weird one because it’s described in several different ways, and the plant in the games doesn’t match the plant on the gwent card.

It seems that when we collect it, we’re collecting the bulbs, based on the photo and this line from The Last Wish: “He could see the feathery moss of pond-blood clinging to the stone lumps, glistening bulbs of a crow’s eye...” (The Voice of Reason 6).

In the game, it’s a small cypress-like bush. The harvested version looks like a seed or nut (looks a lot like a chestnut in particular, but could potentially be meant to represent a strychnine seed?).

The plant on the gwent card is Paris quadrifolia (which is toxic).

There’s also crowberry (Empetrum nigrum), which is a low evergreen shrub.

I decided that crowberry would be the best option for making something both edible and delicious.

(Pictured L to R, first row: in-game harvested crow’s eye, strychnine seed, chestnut. second row: gwent crow’s eye, Paris quadrifolia. third row: in-game crow’s eye, crowberry).

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Pringrape → Globe gilia*

Not a real thing, but the flowering part looks a bit like globe gilia (Gilia capitata).

In Polish, “Siężygron,” which doesn’t seem to be a real thing either.

English book: “Not far from them grew reachcluster, an antidote to every known toxin and venom.” (The Voice of Reason 6).

If we’re talking natural venom remedies, onion and garlic both have globe-like clusters of blooms and have historically been used as a treatment for snake bites.

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Longrube → Cremini

In Polish, “Niezmiar.”

Not a real thing, but it’s a mushroom and kinda looks like cremini, which is easy to acquire.

English book translation, “[...] the crimson-golden ovals of measure-me-nots.” (The Voice of Reason 6).

There are a lot of red/crimson mushrooms, some edible and some not, but I’m going to stick with the game’s representation.

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Han fiber → Celosia*

Not a real thing, but it looks kinda like celosia, which is edible.

(Pictured: Celosia argentea)

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Ginatia petals → Sandspurry OR Peony*

Not a real thing, but when looking for any plants with similar names (in Latin or Polish), I found Spergularia marginata, or sandspurry. It’s kinda close?

Sandspurry does sort of look like the plants in-game.

The picked in-game petals look like peony to me. 

Since I couldn’t find a ~perfect~ match, I’ll be using peony because although there is a similar-looking sandspurry (Spergularia rubra) that grows in my state, its range is just a bit too far north for me to be during its bloom season.

(Pictured clockwise: in-game harvested ginatia petals, peony petal, sandspurry, in-game ginatia.)

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Bloodmoss → Irish moss

Not a real thing

Irish moss (Chondrus crispus) is a red algae that grows along the Atlantic coasts.

In game bloodmoss is found in Skellige, which is partially based off Ireland, where.. Irish moss grows!

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Balisse fruit → Dates

Not a real thing, but they look like dates.

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Real & Toxic

Bryonia → Ivy gourd OR Kudzu

Bryonia is a toxic plant in the Cucurbitaceae family.

There are plenty of edible plants/edible flowers in the same family, but ivy gourd (Coccinia grandis) has edible fruit and leaves, and flowers that look very similar to bryonia.

It’s also vine with a growth habit similar to kudzu, which is edible and readily available.

(Pictured: ivy gourd blossom).

Celandine → Calendula* OR California poppy

Celandine is toxic, probably not a good idea to use it. I do have some celandine leaves because it’s fairly common in folk medicine (like most herbs) but decided to be safe and not use it.

Apparently in Devon, celandine is sometimes called St. John’s wort? I can only find one source for that but they are visually similar.

Calendula just sounds similar, and looks similar :) 

Celandine is in the poppy family (Papaveraceae). Most poppies are not edible, BUT, the California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica) has edible flowers.

(Pictured: in-game celandine, calendula, california poppy).

Ergot seed → Rye grain

Ergot is a toxic fungal disease, most often found on rye.

Fool’s Parsley → Hedge Parsley*

Fool’s Parsley (Aethusa cynapium) is toxic.

I was planning to use Queen Anne’s Lace, because imo it's the easiest to identify and distinguish from hemlock and giant hogweed. But, I wasn’t able to find any and instead came across hedge parsley (Torilis japonica), which is edible.

Hellebore petals → Butterfly pea

Hellebores are part of the Ranunculaceae family. They’re highly toxic.

Petals are purple and used to make purple armour dye, so I decided to use butterfly pea flower (Clitoria ternatea), whose blooms range from blue to pink and can be used as a natural dye.

Mandrake root → Burdock root

Mandrake is toxic, part of the nightshade (Solanaceae) family.

I just chose burdock because it’s also a root and feels kinda spooky.

Mistletoe → White currants

Mistletoe is toxic.

It has little white berries, which kind of look like white currants!

Creeping snowberry (Gaultheria hispidula) is another edible white-berried plant, but I was a little too late to forage them this year.

Wolfsbane → Sage Salvia* OR Lavender*

Wolfsbane is also in the Ranunculaceae family. Extremely toxic.

There are a lot of plants that look similar, I just chose some I had access to. I grew Blue Monday sage salvia and always have lots of lavender on hand.

(Pictured clockwise: in-game harvested wolfsbane, lavender, salvia, in-game wolfsbane).