Infused Vodka: The Set-up

My boyfriend and I decided to try our hand at some infused vodka. His brother comes home in 3 weeks and we wanted to have it ready for that, so I got it all ready to go last night. We each picked a flavor and will see how it turns out. Technically it only needs to sit for 1 week, but this gives us some extra time to not only pack in extra flavor but get some taste testing done in case we need to make adjustments.

The basic set-up cost me around $20. For this I got 2 half gallon mason jars (they were $4.99 each, but a 6 or 8 pack was only $11 something...I currently have no need for that many jars, no do I have room to store them, but if you do I would recommend the pack as it is much more cost effective), a three piece straining funnel, and a pack of cheese cloth (as the funnel will be great for infusions with just fruit, but something finer will be needed for the finer particles like zest or spices). The vodka cost is up to you. You don't want to use anything too cheap, but any decent vodka that you like the taste of will work (you should be able to get something for $10-15).

M wanted to go with apple, so he did some digging around and found this sour apple recipe. I recently moved and have 2 roommates, so I haven't quite bothered to get a decent kitchen set-up which also means no scale. I used the scales at the grocery store while shopping and conversions to come up with the following:

• 3 granny smith apples (peeled, cored, and diced fine)
• 2 lemons (zested, segmented, and seeded)
• 4 limes (zested, segmented, and seeded)
• 1 cup sugar (the actual conversion should have been 1.5-1.75, but my jar was full...)
• 750 ml vodka (I used Belvedere because I'm snobby about liquor, also it was on sale)

The recipe I linked used citrus slices, but the white pith and seeds can be bitter (as I have learned making flavored waters) so I did a little extra work. The zesting took a while and the segmenting got messy, especially with the limes which were honestly a pain to segment. I thought it was worth the effort, but you do not have to go this far.

I had a hard time picking a flavor. Peach and pear sounded lovely, but I have friends that make peach and pear moonshine (similar to apple pie shots actually, just changing the juice flavors and using pieces of fruit as well). My next thought was cucumber melon. I could find cucumber vodka or watermelon vodka, but not cucumber melon. As you may recall, I make a cucumber melon smoothie, so I used that as a base. I ran out of lime, am weary of putting mint leaves in (I don't want to risk bitterness), and I don't think the extra sugar from the honey is necessary. So my base is as follows:

• 2 cucumbers (skinned, and peeled down to core)
• 1/2 honeydew (skinned, seeded, and diced fine)
• 750 ml vodka (again, Belvedere)

You can tell the sour apple has a lot more "stuff" in it.

For both flavors, you can see I put a lot of work into the fruit prep. Zesting citrus with a grater takes a ling time, and peeling a cucumber down to the seeds or segmenting a small citrus can be annoying. The point is to maximize surface area though as the vodka is going to soak up the flavors. That is also why the apples and melon were diced finely (think 1 cm pieces).

The next step is to wait 1 whole week before taste-testing. During this time I need to keep the jars in a cool, dark place and give them a good shake once a day to make sure the ingredients get mixed around and the vodka soaks up all the flavor. After that I will see how they taste and decide if any adjustments need to be made (e.g. should I add in that remaining 0.5-0.75 cup sugar to the sour apple? is the cucumber melon too mellow/should I add some of the flavors I use in the smoothie?)

Stay tuned the next couple weeks as I track this progress. I'll let you know if I made any adjustments during this time, what the end results were, and the final recipes n_n