I made krupnikas (vyritos) (aka boilo) last year. I’m not sure I did a good job. The first sip tastes like honey, the aftertaste is of old socks. I’ll have to try again.
Basic recipe is grain alcohol (you can use whiskey, I used Everclear), orange peel, lemon peel, honey, and spices. You boil together the fruit peel and spices with some water, add the honey, cook it, strain it, then add the alcohol (use an area with good ventilation and away from direct heat or flame). Then bottle it and let it age for a few weeks. Keep pouring off the clear stuff as it floats to the top and bottle that, discard the cloudy stuff at the bottom.
Maybe the cloudy stuff (after a number of weeks) gave it the “old socks” flavor.
I’ll have to re-try this; I know I goofed up somewhere.
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/LITHUANIA/2003-08/1060790531
There was a lot of discussion on a PSU football message board earlier in the fall on Boilo.
It’s gone now and not archived unfortunately.
The one thing I remember is that the hard cores insisted that nothing was to be used but Four Queens 101 proof whiskey.
If I can dig up anything else, I’ll freepmail you.