If you're looking for the perfect homemade gift, look no further than your own liquor cabinet. Infused bourbon is the best thing since Prohibition ended, and it's about time you start creating your own infusions. Once you have your selection of infusions, you can get to work creating your favorite cocktails.
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Not only do they make fantastic holiday gifts for the bourbon lover in your life, or even graduation gifts to those college grads, but booze infusions are almost foolproof, meaning you can get as creative as you want. To get started, you'll need one-quart mason jar per each infusion flavor.
How to Make Infused Bourbon
Add the infusion ingredients, pour over the bourbon, seal the lid, and let sit in a cool dark place for about two weeks or longer. You'll need patience for these since the total time can be several days. As with infusing all alcohol, the longer they sit, the better they get! It's a good idea to shake them once every few days, but otherwise, they should manage well on their own.
When it comes to bourbon selections, you can take two routes: cheap bourbon, or more expensive good bourbon. For our purposes, we used a fairly cheap bourbon. There is a slight difference in taste after the infusion process between a more expensive bourbon and a cheaper variety, but it ultimately comes down to how much money you'd like to spend. We suggest using your favorite bourbon and using it for all of these delicious cocktails.
Some of the most popular bourbons are Maker's Mark and Jim Beam. Knob Creek is another great choice for a higher end bourbon. It's manufactured by Jim Beam and is one of the 4 small batch brands.
Infused Bourbon Recipes
We chose to create a Chocolate Orange infusion, a Cherry Vanilla infusion, and an Apple Pie infusion. For the Chocolate Orange, we used cacao nibs because they take an awful long time to evaporate in liquid, which is helpful for the slow roll of the infusion process. Once the infusions are ready, use a strainer and strain the liquid into a nice container.
For the Cherry Vanilla infusion, we stuck to dried cherries, though you could absolutely use fresh cherries if they're in season. If you're making this infusion in the winter, chances are finding some fresh cherries might be a struggle, but dried cherries are readily available.
For the Apple Pie infusion, we wanted to infuse the flavors of apple pie fully into the bourbon using cloves, cinnamon sticks, and fresh apples.
Chocolate Orange Bourbon
- Peels of two large navel oranges
- 2/3 cup of cacao nibs
- 3 cups of bourbon
Cherry Vanilla Bourbon
- 8 ounces of dried cherries
- 2 vanilla bean pods
- 3 cups of bourbon
Apple Pie Bourbon
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- 3 Granny Smith apples, cubed
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp cloves
- 3 cups of bourbon
You don't have to stop at these infusions! Blueberries, blackberries, orange peel, grapefruit, whole cloves, coffee beans, and even pecans are great DIY infusers. If you're more of an bourbon cocktail purist, you can make an old fashioned or a Manhattan with these infusions.
This article was originally published on Jun 14, 2018.
