For starters, if you have an Australian accent, “glögg” is pronounced as “glerg”. If you have some other accent, don’t pronounced the “r” in “glerg”.

I have managed to make glögg that tastes the SAME as the glögg I drank in Gamla Stan, Stockholm!

This is the recipe people! I found many recipes for Swedish glögg on the internet and they were all different. If you are confused about which recipe is a good one, try this recipe, it gives you the same flavour of the glögg that I drank in Gamla Stan, Stockholm! LittleB has declared that the flavour is the same, and she has a nose for these things. There is a non-alcoholic glögg I enjoyed very much in Ronneby, which tastes something close to this too.

Since nobody (I have seen online) has the exact same recipe as this, I will call this “Mad Violinist Glögg”. I suggest you make this recipe first before you go changing anything. It has the same “sweet & sour” characteristics as the Stockholm glögg. The amount of sugar in a glögg recipe varies according to people’s personal tastes. If you want it sweeter, add more sugar. If you want it less sweet, add less sugar. Note that I am using 180g of sugar and a lot of recipes say 250g. I feel I have got a good happy medium, and tastes like it did in Stockholm. If you want more alcohol, add some brandy.

Glögg is a popular Christmas drink in Sweden when the weather is very cold. People don’t drink it at other times of the year. I am not used to (or bound to) any such tradition, so I’ll drink it whenever I like. I don’t care if it is hot summer here. I drink coffee in summer. In fact my coffee is hotter than my glögg.

So lets get to it then, this is the recipe:

1 bottle of red wine (750ml)

(any red wine will do, you aren’t going to taste it much when it is finished. Glögg came about because thrifty Swedes wanted to do something with wine that had gone bad, to make it drinkable again. If the wine is drinkable in the first place, then you are off to a great start. )

3/4 cup water
some orange peel cut up
8 whole cloves
10 whole cardamon pods
2 cinnamon sticks
small amount of freshly slice ginger (see photo)
40 sugar cubes (180 grams)
raisins
sliced blanched almonds

1. Bruise the cardamon pods (squash them a little with the back of a teaspoon).

2. Break up the cinnamon sticks a bit.

Below you can see the dry ingredients in the pot, there should be 40 sugar cubes, not 20:

3. Heat the wine with water, orange peel, cloves, cardamon pods, cinnamon stick, sugar and ginger.

4. Simmer mixture for about 45 minutes. Do not boil and keep temperature below 73 degrees so that the alcohol doesn’t boil away.

5. Place 1 teaspoon of raisins and 1 teaspoon of sliced almonds in a small cup.

6. Strain (if you want) and pour the hot mixture into your small cup and enjoy.

If you have another cup an hour later, you’ll notice that the drink is sweeter, so don’t judge the sweetness after the first 45 minute heating. If you love the flavour of the drink after it has been sitting for an hour, as I do, you might want to wait an hour before your first glögg. I have read that some people allow the drink to cool, and they refrigerate the glögg overnight before heating it up again to serve the next day. I’m not sure how long the excess glögg lasts. I have read that if you put it in the fridge, it can last anywhere from 2 weeks up to a year. Mine won’t last that long.

I hope you try it and like it. That’ll be all.