Saturday, August 1, 2009

Summer Fun

It's hot. It's hot in Seattle. It's hot in Seattle and what better to cool off the soul than some yummy yummy new vodkas!?!

So, earlier this summer when we were just starting to warm up I started infusing some lighter vodkas that would be good to mix with a little club soda and a spritz of lime or some crushed mint leaves...mmmm.

I actually may need to go fix myself a little drink before carrying on with this post....

Ok, that's better.

So, to start the summer out I made 2 delicious libations...lavender vodka and blueberry vodka. I'll start with the blueberry. Becca had got us started on blueberry vodka spritzers last summer and man, those go down like water. So, I gave it a go:
  • ~ 1 Liter vodka
  • 12 oz fresh blueberries
  • 3/4 fresh squeezed lemon
Mash the blueberries into a lovely purple, pulpy mess, pour in the vodka and squeeze in the lemon juice (this helps keep the color).



Then I let this sit for a week and strained out the berries. This turned out to be a bit of a pain in the butt because it's sooooo pulpy. I've used coffee filters for other straining, but had to run the blueberry stuff through a regular mesh strainer 3 times to get out the big hunks and then through cheese cloth because it just wouldn't go through the coffee filter.

The final color is absolutely gorgeous as you can see in the photo below. The favor was good, but the blueberry flavor wasn't quite as strong as I'd like. I also just infused some raspberries into grappa for Nicole and it wasn't that strong either. I'm thinking maybe I should dry heating up the berries before infusing them into the vodka so the flavor will be stronger. That'll be the next experiment!

This blueberry vodka is best served with some club soda and a spritz of lime or mint. Light and refreshing and perfect when heat-pocolypse strikes and we have the hottest day ever in Seattle :-)


The same day, I also took my first stab at lavender infused vodka. Mmmmmmmmm. This was amazing. So good! And I think it can even get better.

This one is so simple and takes the least amount of time out of all the infusions I've done so far.
  • ~1 Liter of vodka
  • 1/4 cup of lavender


We infused it for 30 minutes. Everything I read said that infusing it much longer will ruin it. We used cheap vodka for this and because the lavender is so subtle you could definitely taste the vodka more. I think we'll probably go 45 minutes to an hour next time and use a higher quality vodka so its not so astringent. But, event though it was a little...alcoholy, it was still absolutely delicious. A nice herby flavor, which was a pleasant break from the more typical fruity drinks of the summer.