Infuse Your Booze! DIY Flavored Liquors

NW Edible

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This is one of those posts where I will come off as a lush, and an opinionated one at that. But these cocktails? They are simply research, baby – this is all for you.

If you like the creativity of cooking and combining flavors and you drink hard alcohol, then booze infusions are a natural place to play around and have fun personalizing your liquor cabinet. Infusions are also a great DIY holiday gift, if your crowd is a little more scotch and speakeasy than Santa hat and sugar cookie.

Booze infusions are very simple – you soak ingredients in a base alcohol until you like the taste. If you can make tea, you can make a cucumber gin or a chai tea vodka or a cherry bourbon. Once you have those infusions on hand, you’re some ice and a mixer or two from a Cucumber Gin Gimlet (very refreshing in late August) or a Chai White Russian or a Cherry Manhattan.

That’s really all there is to it, so if you learn best by doing, feel free to stop reading now and go play around with whatever’s in your liquor and spice cabinet. I won’t take it personally. If you want the complete guide to everything I’ve learned about making my own infusions, read on.

ABOUT ERICA: What happens when a professional chef turns into a gardening fanatic? Can ‘homemaker’ be a political statement? How self-sufficient can a family be on one-third of an acre in suburban Seattle? Where is the right balance between living cheap and living well? Can one ever have too many rutabagas? How much lawn do growing kids really need when there are fruit trees to be planted? Erica blogs about gardening, cooking, urban homesteading and living slow-ish in the Maritime Northwest.