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Friday, January 11, 2019

Infusing Vodka

You'd think it would be a simple process, right? Throw some goodies into your vodka bottle, let it sit in a dark room for 5+ days, maybe shake it every once and a while, and boom; flavored vodka.

But I'm not a simple person. Why not make things complicated? I ask myself. Not really. I don't ask myself that. It just turns out that way.

Honestly though, I wanted some of that Heritage Coffee Vodka I'd bought for my cousin's Christmas present. Heritage makes some of the best infused vodkas I'd ever had - especially for that price. [Their Blood Orange flavor is amazeballs] But apparently everyone else and their mother wanted it too because my liquor store (lol - "my" liquor store. The one closest to me.) has been out all week so I finally decided to just buy some damn vodka and make it myself.

But I wasn't gonna wait no five days. Hells no.

Time to employ the Instant Pot. I thought, well hell, I had a recipe to make vanilla extract in my instant pot and that worked out just fine; nothing is different here except the ratio of alcohol to flavorants. 

So, I took a cup of crushed whole beans and a cup of ground decaf (first mistake) and mixed it into 3 mason jars I split the vodka in. At least I was smart enough to know to give it plenty of room. So, I put a cup of water in the bottom, stuck my 3 jars on the rack, and infused for 30 minutes. I then let it naturally release for 30 minutes and opened the lid.

OK SCIENCE SIDE OF TUMBLR, HELP ME OUT HERE.

The jars were still boiling.

Ok ok, I looked this up... alcohol boils at only 173 degrees. It's weird, but this makes sense. The jars were still hot, so the contents were still boiling. I let them cool for a while, and once they were cool to the touch, I decided to try and cool them off faster by slowly filling up my sink with cold water.

Ok ready, SSoT?

The contents of the jars went nuts. Especially if I tried to run cold water over the lids. They fizzed and boiled like they were super hot. I have a cool video of this, and here's the meme for reference:












I have a feeling that it's got something to do with alcohol being super-cooled, but I couldn't even look this up on Google. I mean, "pressure cooking alcohol" isn't something you can really find on someone's blog. (Except mine, apparently). I let them cool even longer until the entire jar was cold to the touch, and only then did I attempt to remove the lids.

By the way, I had to look up how to remove canning lids on google because they were stuck and I wasn't sure how normal this was. I mean, they were seriously stuck.

So, being afraid for my life (essentially) about exploding alcohol, I finally decided to let them sit overnight before attempting to remove the lids. The next day, it wasn't any easier. I tried heating the lids with hot water, banging on them with a knife, and popping them off using a leaver, but I didn't want alcohol under pressure to fly out all over everything. My last resort was destroying the lids by drilling a hole in the top to release pressure. And you better believe they were still under pressure. I heard the hiss of each jar as I drilled the tiny hole through each lid, and they popped off with no issue.

All that effort and what did I get out of it? Very muddy (thanks to the pre-ground grounds) and strong/bitter alcohol. It wasn't even that much cheaper than just buying the Heritage brand, which tastes infinitely better than this swill.

It still works well enough to mix with Irish Cream liqueur or things like that. But mixing is also very weird. It doesn't mix with my half & half without some effort. It's very strange.

So, you know what I did? I called another local liquor store and asked if they carried Heritage vodka. (It's a local brand and so they don't sell it in big box liquor stores). And guess what? They did. I went out and bought it.

Now I'm happy.









 

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