Infusion Confusion

The time has come for yet another project that will interest me for a month and then I'll give up on it like all the others. But at least a month will be long enough to score a few results! I'm interested in liquor infusion, and my chosen canvas is currently vodka.

I've been looking at many websites to find the best recipe for my first creation: bacon-infused vodka. I don't want to waste my time and vodka attempting to create "better versions" of vodkas that are already readily available in any liquor store. They already make an orange-flavored vodka, so why bother making my own (until I get good at it and I realize it'd be much better home-infused)? There are very few commercially-made bacon-infused vodkas. In fact, I believe there are NO commercially-available bacon-infused vodkas. The only places you'll find them are in bars because the bartenders infuse them there for use in unique concoctions.

Here is the recipe that I found over on BrowniePointsBlog.com:

1. Fry up three strips of bacon.
2. Add cooked bacon to a clean pint sized mason jar. Trim the ends of the bacon if they are too tall to fit in the jar. Or you could go hog wild and just pile in a bunch of fried up bacon scraps. Optional: add crushed black peppercorns.
3. Fill the jar up with vodka. Cap and place in a dark cupboard for at least three weeks. That’s right- I didn’t refrigerate it.
4. At the end of the three week resting period, place the bacon vodka in the freezer to solidify the fats. Strain out the fats through a coffee filter to yield a clear filtered pale yellow bacon vodka.
5. Decant into decorative bottles and enjoy.

I think that this is the recipe I will use, since it makes the most sense, involves very little work and it only will use a pint of my 750-mL bottle - leaving me with about 280mL (if my math is correct).

I also stumbled upon a site called Infusions of Grandeur, where they've got a lot of vodka-infusing information and recipes. The interesting photos remind me of Cockeyed.com with the accompanying quotes/captions. I plan on trying to create their vanilla vodka recipe, their caramel vodka recipe, or perhaps just their vanilla-caramel vodka recipe!

I'm really hoping that this will be an interesting experience. And that it will finally get me over my distaste for vodka in general.

I will let you all know when my grand experiments finally begin. I currently have all of the vodka, bacon and containerware for my first attempt, but I'm interested in picking up a cheap filtration system because the site recommends taking borderline-decent vodka and filtering it multiple times before attempting the infusions in the first place. It seems like a good idea. We'll have to wait and taste and see...