Has anyone ever made their own infused vodka?

I have! I made one with cranberries and one with orange/lemon rinds. I didn't really do it right (the flavor was weak), but the gift bottles looked beautiful with the fruit in them.

Hey k!!

I am going to try some infused oils too. Those bottles will look beautiful.

But weak oil is okay. Strange vodka? Dunno. I am nervous about using candy. Adding sugar to alcohol? We'll see. Its already bright red.

At least its a fun idea. It is just for some friends who will appreciate the effort.

I think it'll be great!

Oil infusions need time to mature, don't they? What types of those are you doing?

You can infuse vinegar as well. That's an easy one.

I am not sure which oils yet. I am going to try to find cheap bottles today. There is a store, China Fair, in Newton with things like that.

I did the vodka with candy because my friend said it only takes a week, rather than fruit which can take two weeks.

Okay, so last night I put the candy in with the vodka and let it sit over night. This morning almost all of the candy has dissolved, the vodka is BRIGHT red. There is some candy stuck in the corners? of the bottle. So I'll see how those do. (But bright red in a clear bottle with green ribbons... cute.)

It smells great. Like a Red Hot. I'll taste it tonight.

Who knows, this might be a terrible experiment, but hey it'll be fun to test!

Sounds fabulous!!!

What a great idea....hope the taste testing goes well also

Ive not done alcohol before...oils yes, alcohol, no.

I tasted it last night. Oh boy, its good!! (I love cinnamon candy so I guess that's why). But jeesh, I should have done it AFTER wrapping gifts. I was cutting a little crooked after my two shots (had to test each bottle!).

I still need to find bottles to put it in. I might actually *gulp* go to Christmas Tree shop tomorrow.

I made raspberry vodka. I just put the vodka in another container, jammed the bottle full of raspberries and filled it back up (slowly). Obviously easier if I had a different container entirely, but a gift's a gift.

It came out great. After it was sufficiently red and berry-ish he just stuck it in the freezer.

I like using fruit because there's so many great combinations. A good rule of thumb is to use about 50% more fruit than you think you need, especially if you want to use it right away.

I used vodka as the base for some home-made kahlua once. I don't have the recipe right here but I think it included sugar, coffee, of course and whole vanilla beans. It had to infuse for a while, but it was quite tasty. I remember that we were told to put a few grinds of black peppercorns in there too, for that liqueur bite.

I filled a huge wine bottle with it. It was for a brunch where we used huge mugs of coffee with a big shot of kahlua, a big shot of Jack Daniels and/or a shot of brandy... a little bit of sugar and some whipped cream. Oh boy. Those were good. They were called Coffee Nudges and we used to joke that all it too was a nudge afterwards and you'd fall over.

BigDice uses Swedish candy called 'Turkish Peppar'. It's like very hot, spicy liquorice (my goodness, how do spell that?). The vodka turns to a very interesting brown-green color kinda like motor oil. We both think it tastes great. Almost all of our German friends don't. Oh well...

Of course you can also use gummi bears - that's more German.