Tag Archives: infusions

It has begun….

kitchen crafty, ,

First, I must revisit the last post. Hobo wine sucked. Sucked bad. Just…ewww. Filtering through paper coffee filters takes forEVER!

Now, with that out of the way I was looking in the pantry and saw a lonely bottle full of red liquid and grey fruit hiding in the deepest recesses. Oh right! Raspberry vodka infusion! It’s only been going for a year (eyeroll). I removed the zombie looking fruits and trasferred the sweet sweet nectar to a plastic (I know, I KNOW!) Barcardi bottle. Why? I need that Svedka bottle for something else. What was that something else?

Coffee infused vodka.

Yes. Being October, I was waaaay late on getting a good infusion for Christmas. Until I found a recipe that would work in 12 hours. Nice! From the Something Awful forums:

For a real quick coffee vodka, you can use the cold-brew method of making coffee, but substitute vodka for the water.

100g medium grind fresh medium-dark coffee, soaked in 750ml of vodka for 12 hours in the fridge, stirred several times during the process, & then filtered through paper coffee filters.

That’s it. 12 hours top to bottom.

It makes a really intense coffee vodka concentrate, overpowering if you drink it straight, but it’s stunning if you mix 50/50 with ice-cold milk, or Baileys for an even better flavour.
It would make an excellent addition to cocktails, especially mixed with chocolate liquers, & I imagine it would make an intense espresso martini.

 

Intense flavor in 12 hours. Right. So, Sunday afternoon I start the infusion. Tuesday night I filtered it. That’s…that’s way more than 12 hours. Way more.

I dipped the tip of my pinkie into the infusion and tasted it. Four hours later I was still tasting it. It was…foul. It very much needed to be cut. I added more vodka and put it in the pantry to age. I also siphoned off a bit and added sugar syrup for homemade Kahlua. I haven’t tasted it yet. I’ll let my resident guinea pig (and ultimate receiver of this concoction) try it out first.

Infusions

kitchen crafty

I have a lot of herbs. I planted 3 types of basil (I only count one maybe two that have survived. tip: don’t use popsicle sticks as markers) and I don’t use a lot of basil. In fact, I don’t know of anyone outside of the country of Italy that would use this much basil. So I decided I had to do something. I made Lime-cello last Christmas (went over quite well) and I heard I could do the same with herbs. Herbs have a far shorter infusion time (36 hours instead of 6 month for fresh fruit). So. Here I am. Veritable small hills of basil, mint, and lemon verbena (the hell do you do with verbena??) and a Spec’s nearby. 100 proof vodka and Everclear in hand, I made up some infusions. So far:

  • 1 12oz jar of Everclear + Lemon Verbena (it turned green in 4 hours)
  • 1 12 oz jar of Basil + Everclear (again, green in 4 hours)
  • 1 12 oz of Basil + vodka (not as vibrant green in a day)

This was done Sunday. I still have not strained out the herbs. why? LAZY. I will do it tonight and probably won’t sweeten it until it’s aged up a bit. I dunno. Sugar is cheap.