Oatmeal Infused Vodka

750 ml filtered vodka
2 cups dry oatmeal
1 Tablespoon sugar
Infuse one week

This is a pleasant surprise. The taste of the uncooked oats is reminiscent of Cheerios.

Coffee Infused Vodka

2 cups whole coffee beans

1 liter vodka

Infuse for one to several weeks.

I talked to the head roaster at Peace Coffee to get his opinion on what sort of beans would be best to infuse in vodka. He recommended using espresso beans. He said this would best bring out the caramel and smoky flavors in the coffee.

The flavor does not disappoint. After a week the infusion smells fantastic. A nice, full flavor. Very much like drinking shots of cold-pressed coffee.

I haven't found just the right cocktail for this one yet. Came up with something I called a Pasty Pole, which is awfully nice, but I hope to come up with a signature cocktail to show this off.

Caramel Vodka

1 batch homemade caramel

1 liter vodka

This recipe uses homemade caramel. I have heard of other recipes that use caramel sauce or caramel cubes. I prefer the bite of the caramel without any dairy added.

After you remove the caramel from the stove, DON'T add the cream you would add if you were making caramel sauce. And keep in mind that the caramel is going to be VERY hot when it comes off the stove. I pour a liter of vodka into two quart jars and have these set aside ready for the caramel. You can put the vodka in some other heavy container but I wouldn't try to pour the caramel straight into the vodka bottle.

I pour half the caramel into each of my two jars of vodka. The caramel forms a hard lump on the bottom of each jar, but this dissolves fairly quickly.

This vodka is ready to drink as soon as the caramel is dissolved.

Bacon Infused Vodka

750 ml vodka

six strips bacon

Cook the bacon until crisp. Drain grease. Infuse in vodka for one to several weeks.

If the resulting infusion is greasy, try freezing it. That should make the grease for solid pieces, which can then be filtered out.

Definitely worth experimenting with.

Chocolate Vodka

750 ml vodka

12 ounces chocolate syrup

This is not an infusion, but rather a solution. You just mix the vodka with some chocolate syrup. As such, it's ready to use as soon as it's mixed together.

It's everything you expect: sweet, chocolaty, syrupy. I'd like to figure out how to separate out some of the solids and leave it clearer and cleaner in the mouth.

I've heard of others who infuse vodka with pieces of chocolate. I am assuming that the pieces of chocolate eventually dissolve into the vodka and so what results is still a solution. I might try that to see if it yields a less muddy result.

I am also curious to figure out how to filter this stuff. It pours right through a wire strainer, but immediately stops when I try to pour it through a coffee filter or cloth. Suggestions are appreciated.

Ginger Infused Vodka

750 ml vodka, filtered

1/2 cup ginger root, peeled and sliced

1 teaspoon sugar

Allow to infuse for one to several weeks. This is one of my favorites.

Raspberry Infused Vodka

Mom's Recipe:

1. Fill a quart canning jar with raspberries
2. Pour a cup of sugar over the raspberries
3. Fill the jar with vodka (about half of a 750ml bottle)
4. Close jar with a tight-fitting, two-piece canning lid and ring
5. Let the jar sit upright for one week
6. Turn the jar upside down amd let sit for one week.
7. Turn jar weekly until vodka has infused for six weeks
8. Strain through a colander or similar strainer

NOTES: Mom says if you press the raspberries when you're draining them, the infused vodka will be cloudy. When left to infuse more than six weeks, the finished product tastes seedy.

My parents have been making raspberry vodka for years. They grow a lot of raspberries and are always looking for new ways to use them, especially at the end of the season when they are most bountiful. Honestly, my parents are not realy drinking people, but this recipe quickly became a family staple.

Early in the fall my parents' kitchen is dotted with quart jars infusing. Dad says once he came home for lunch and was halfway through a bowl of raspberries before he realized that they were infusing. Evidently it was a long afternoon.

Each year's new batch is generally first served at Thanksgiving. About ten years ago, Berger came to visit for Thanksgiving. He was really quite enamored with the stuff and my dad shared the family secret: "Very cheap vodka. VERY expensive raspberries".

This stuff is quite good to sip on its own, though some will certainly find it too sweet and syrupy. I suspect you could use half the sugar and shorten the infusing time and would still have a rich-tasting infusion. I sometimes thin it out with more vodka.

My dad makes a cocktail with orange juice - let's call it a Raspberry Sunrise.

I like to mix it with hard cider and call that a Pink Hoo-ha.

Sticky Floor

1 oz Lemon Juice
1 oz Honey
Ginger
2 oz Vodka

Mix equal amounts honey and lemon juice. Add some ginger if you like. Combine two ounces of this mixture with two ounces of vodka. Shake and serve up.

Brazilian Barbie

2 oz Rhubarb Tea
2 oz Vodka

Shaken and served up.

Minnesota Vodka

Minnesota does not strike you or me as a global center for vodka. As if part of a secret plan, though, the epicenter of the vodka economy has moved closer and closer to home over the past ten years.

My personal vodka of choice is Shakers. I like a dirty Shakers martini. I believe it was Berger who introduced me to the dirty martini in the mid-90s. Thanks, Berger. I first heard of Shakers about five years ago as the vodka that was made with local wheat at the ethanol plant in Benson. So I tried the stuff in an effort to buy locally. And like I said it's become my favorite.

Now I just recently tried Prairie Organic Vodka from Phillips. It's made from certified organic #2 yellow corn. Like Shakers, it's distilled in Benson, MN (at the same plant? good question). It's good stuff, but so far I only drank it in Bloody Marys one morning and have not really given it a thoughtful tasting.

Phillips is not generally known as a high-end brand. For infusions I have been using Phillips Vodka 80. It's less than $7 a bottle and works every time. But Phillips did introduce us to Chopin and Belvedere, (did you know these were imported by a Minneapolis company?) and with the Prairie Organic they have earned a lot of respect.

Lemon Infused Vodka

Test Batch:

375 ml vodka

zest of three lemons

1 tsp sugar

It was Halloween when I went over to Zipp's Liquors to buy vodka for this experiment. The nice lady who helped me was wearing a "Got Milk?" t-shirt and had a milk moustache painted on her upper lip. A bit outdated, and I didn't get it when I first saw her behind the counter because I just saw the white upper lip and not the t-shirt. I wondered if this was some waxing procedure gone awry.

Her associate was a young man wearing a sexy nurse outfit. He looked like a genetic mashup of Kurt Cobain and Courtney love. Also outdated, but Halloween gruesome to be sure.

I mentioned the experiment and the nice lady told me that she and her husband had also tried lemon-infused vodka. She told me they had used too much pith (too much of the white art of the rind under the zest. Luckily my friend Rory gave me a great zester for my birthday and so this was no problem.

Telsche warned me against letting the lemon zest infuse for more than a week.

Honey Vodka

12 ounces honey
750 ml vodka


Jim came back from a trip to Poland with a jar of organic honey from the farm where his grandmother was born. This was some good honey. I thought he was wasting it when he poured several ounces into a quart jar and then filled the jar with vodka.

After shaking the jar for several minutes the vodka was a beautiful amber color. And the flavor was amazing. The vodka smartly highlighted the range of flavors in the honey.

This was the night of the final debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. I believe we drank every time we heard the word "middle class", but I'm sure we drank more often than that.

Cinnamon Infused Vodka

Test Batch:
375ml vodka, charcoal-filtered
2 cinnamon sticks
1 tsp sugar



This is an easy one. Just drop a couple of cinnamon sticks in and let it sit.



After five days the flavor was quite nice. At the time of this posting this batch has infused 12 days and it's still getting better. I understand this one can sit for weeks and it will be just fine.

Mint Infused Vodka

Test Batch:

375ml vodka, charcoal-filtered

1 handful mint

1tsp sugar

After reading about mint-infused vodka at Infusions of Grandeur and at Leigh and Spencer, my expectations were low. But by the time I'd done that reading, I had already picked the mint from my parents' garden.

Based on their recommendations, I decided to filter after just two days.

The resulting flavor is certainly tooth-pasty, but I look forward to seeing how well it does when combined with other flavors.

Fennel Infused Vodka

Test Batch:

375 ml vodka

2 heads dry fennel seeds

1 tsp sugar

I've never had much luck growing fennel in my yard. The bulbs never amount to much, and the seeds drop all over the garden. The hundreds of seedlings that come up in the spring are only discernible from dill when you smell them. Pleasantly-aromaed weeding is still weeding.

So I have fennel plants. If I am still paying attention to them late in the season, I snip off the seed heads so that the hundreds of seedlings don't become thousands.

I'll admit that the fennel vodka came out an effort to find something to do with fennel seeds rather than out of some desire for fennel-flavored vodka. But my goodness this has been a pleasant surprise. The taste is reminiscent of ouzo, of course, and when I first tasted the stuff I immediately wondered if mixing the fennel vodka with other flavors like ginger and cinnamon would make something jaegermeister-like.