Experiments with infusions

[michiexile]

For Christmas, my wife gave me a cookbook, Infused. This book provides recipes for your own flavour infused vodkas, your own liqueurs, and cocktails based on these.

It's a really nice and inspiring read.



Now, a few weeks back I bought really cheap vanilla beans off of Quinn, who had ordered them from eBay on my recommendation and my pledge to buy. Yesterday I bought some cheap vodka ($10 for a 1.75l bottle) from Trader Joe's, and so it was time to do Stuff(tm).

As a first experiment, we'll try to infuse vodka with
* Saffron and Vanilla: One bean split lengthwise and about 1g of saffron to about 1 pint/500ml of Vodka.
* Chocolate and Vanilla: One bean split lengthwise and about 1dl of cocoa powder to about 1 pint/500ml of Vodka.

We first portion it up in containers:


Then we pour the vodka over it all, stirring slightly to mix it all in


Finally, we cover it all up, as anaerobically as we care to, and stow it away for a month.


I'll be back to tell you how it all turns out.

Comments

[bunnykitteh.livejournal.com]

Neat combos! I did my own peppercorn vodka once with some Stoli and tellicherry peppercorns... way better than Peppar.

Does the book give strategies for filtering the product? What happens with that cocoa???

[michiexile]

The book suggests coffee filters. I'll post about the cocoa filtering once I've done it. My slightly mortared anise seeds filtered out very neatly through a pile of coffee filters.