3. Prep your Ingredients:
There’s no prep needed for your spirit here, but you may want to prep your flavoring ingredient. For a more nerdy explanation, scroll to “The Science of Infusions” section below. But for know, just know this:
The smaller you cut the pieces of your flavoring ingredient, the faster your flavor will infuse. So if you want to infuse dried apricots into brandy (yes please), then consider chopping your dried apricots into small pieces to increase the surface area of apricot touching brandy.
There isn’t really much of a downside to chopping things too small, as long as you will have the ability to strain it out (again, why we recommend our super fine mesh strainer.)
Photo by egor-myznik via www.unsplash.com
When infusing with spices or teas, consider buying them in “whole” format and then breaking them down yourself. That’s because as soon as they are ground or chopped, the delicious aromatics begin to escape. If you buy them whole and break them up yourself, you can capture more of those aromatics in your infused spirit. (Also, powdered spices are very difficult to strain out!) Also consider toasting your hard spices as this will bring out the oil to the surface and enhance the flavor of the spice.
When infusing things made from plants, you may want to also think about the different components and the flavors they bring. There’s a reason you typically remove cilantro stems from your food – they don’t taste good! Often there are parts of the plant or fruit that are bitter or bring a bitter flavor. Plan accordingly to make sure you’re only adding the flavors you want.
- When Infusing lemon peels, remove as much of the pith as possible
- When infusing rosemary, remove the herb from the branches
- When infusing stone fruit, remove the pits (super important: some of them are poisonous!)
- When infusing peppers, you MAY want to remove the seeds (the seeds make the infusion WAY spicier.)
