Infusing Vodka: The Maiden Voyage

For the last few Christmases, the adults in my mom's family have done a white elephant-style bottle exchange in lieu of giving each other presents. We all bring a wrapped-up bottle--which can be anything from a bottle of shampoo to a bottle of Boone's Farm to a bottle of high-priced spirits--and draw numbers. We're ruthless about stealing each others' good stuff, and it's great fun.

It's also wildly unpredictable: Last year, I ended up with a bottle of water (curse you, Aunt Rita!). This year, I had a bottle of Jack Daniels stolen from me, a crystal skull-shaped bottle of vodka stolen from me, and ended up with a bottle of spiced rum, which I then traded for two bottles of wine.

In the past, I've brought over-sized bottles of beer, holiday beer sampler sets, and bourbon to the exchange. This year, I wanted to do something more interesting for my contribution, so I decided to infuse my own vodka.

You can Google "how to infuse vodka" and find a few million sites that will show you the basics of the process. It's pretty simple: put some stuff in a jar, pour the vodka over it, put the jar in a dark place, and wait. You can successfully infuse vodka with almost any flavor, from fruit to coffee to herbs to bacon (yes, bacon! it's supposed to be fantastic in Bloody Marys).

There's a lot of information out there, but every site that I visited said that infusing vodka is a tricky thing: you can follow a recipe exactly and it'll still turn out terrible, or something that tastes wonderful one day will turn acrid the next, and that it all depends on what vodka you're using and the quality of your fruit and where you store your jars and what phase of the moon you're working in and whether or not your ring finger is longer than your middle finger, etc.

You get the picture. Obviously, it's a oft-attempted yet somewhat tricky process. After reviewing a few of these sites, I decided to take my chances without using a recipe. If the infused vodkas tasted terrible, I figured I could throw the half-empty Svedka bottle in a bag and make a joke of it. Heck, a half-liter of good vodka is better than a full liter of foul homemade liqueur, right?

And a couple of times, I was pretty close to dumping the infusions down the drain. I made one batch of cranberry-orange vodka and one of ginger-pear vodka. The ingredients were pretty basic: lots of Svedka along with fresh cranberries, oranges, pears, and ginger.

I cut them up, threw them in a couple of old jars, and waited.

After day one, the oranges had made the cranberry-orange vodka into a bitter mess, and I had to strain the oranges out. Similarly, the ginger had taken over the pear infusion and the stuff reeked to high heck. I took the ginger chips out, too.

After day three, both vodkas smelled like rotting fruit and tasted like rubbing alcohol. I fished out the discolored pear chunks, stirred a little sugar into both bottles, and began to pray.

After day five, the cranberry vodka had taken on a bright red color, had lost a little of its obvious alcohol flavor, and was pretty palatable; I could sip it straight without gagging (something I could never do with plain vodka). The pear vodka seemed like a loss--it felt hot and somehow sickly in my mouth--but I strained both jars anyway and stuck them in the fridge.

Mysteriously, on day eight, both vodkas had developed smooth, mellow flavors. The pear-ginger vodka tasted like sweet, ripe pears but had an intriguing ginger fragrance. The cranberry-orange vodka had lost its bitterness and tasted like a cosmo waiting to happen.

So what happened inside these battered old Mason jars? It seemed like some sort of magic: every day I tasted the vodkas, they were completely different and completely surprising. I waffled between despair and elation with every wring of the cheesecloth, with every whiff that escaped the newly opened jars. If I'd had less faith in the process, I would have thrown them out without giving them a chance to transform themselves into their final deliciousness.

My Uncle Mike ended up with the vodkas in the bottle exchange, and he gave them a very positive review. He sampled them on Christmas day and found them smooth enough to drink straight without diluting them in juice or soda.

I guess that this makes them a rousing success. But what a nerve-racking procedure! I suppose that infusng strong spirits is not for the faint of heart.

And you thought you'd get out of this post pun-free. Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!