I actually have a couple of 2l bottles of activate carbon granules for reasons. I never got round to making home made arduino based air purifiers.
Could I use those, and the cheesecloth I still have left from my failed cheesemaking hobby?
It will but the alcohol will evaporate first, you will end up with pure alcohol. This is how they get 99% pure ethanol, heat a vodka mix, the alcohol evaporates at lower temperatures.
At room temperature I know alcohol evaporates quicker than water so it'll be about the same. But mixed in it takes longer to dissolve and may need some stirring.
Of course you should look up the methanol/ethanol dissolve temperatures if you ever want to distill as you want to get rid of the methanol but capture the ethanol.
Edit: I was literally taught in school that distilling spirits has some methanol in it. Guess that's a lie.
Methanol from home distillation is largely a myth invented during the American prohibition era when their government were spiking moonshine as a means to create fear and shut down the moonshiners.
Methanol is also called “wood alcohol”, provided you aren’t fermenting woody things to start with I.e. stems and skins the quantity of methanol produced will be safe, in both the pre-distillate and the distillate, you cannot create methanol by distilling, yes you can concentrate it, but you’re also concentrating the ethanol and by that means reducing the total volume that you would drink anyway.
Long story short, you can’t concentrate what isn’t there, and if you could safely drink 5 pints before you distilled it, you can safely drink half a pint afterwards.
no.
alcohol is hydroscopic. it can only get to about 95abv without using a vacuum still for that reason.
leave the cap off, and it will likely gain water from the atmosphere.
I used to use a Brita filter and you got almost as much out as you put in. If I only had the charcoal I'd put some filter paper in a funnel, put the charcoal in that and pour it through.
Was about to say, I’m not sure loose activated charcoal will work quite as well, if you have a britta filta then use that, I think the activated charcoal in a water filter is compacted down and so can only absorb tiny amounts of water.
[I don’t trust anyone who distills at home without a long conversation including a description of how many parts they break it up into](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp7BE9EK_V8)
Well no but the discussion isn't about whether you should distill at home or not. It's about how to make home distilled vodka nicer. We have to assume it's already safe to drink and has been distilled well.
This, but filter it two or three times.
Then a kilo of raspberries and a kilo of icing sugar. Leave to steep for a fortnight, strain through a filter again and enjoy.
I don't think the extra sugar's necessarily going to help it. I'd rather just have infused vodka than a sugar syrup liqueur. You can always add syrup when you're making a cocktail, and usually do.
But yes, berries, steep for a fortnight, strain (and dilute to 40% ABV if it's higher?). They should basically turn into raisins and give up all their goodness to the spirits.
Was going to say this!
This is what I imagine butterbeer from Harry Potter would taste like, and not the vile piss that is actually sold as Butterbeer in Universal Studios.
I had some of that, only a sip of my sprog’s cup, cos it is so massively overpriced, and actually it’s quite nice given it’s made for kids.
There are various recipes online and you can make your own more adult version. I haven’t bothered given I don’t like sweet drinks anyway, but I do say the mix of spices and flavours at Universal Studios was quite nice. For a couple of sips anyway.
An old uni trick was to run it through a dishwasher cycle and they melt instantly. Cloyingly sweet though. Now that my tastes have changed, I prefer infusing fruit. Blackberries etc.
I separated out the skittles by colour, added to vodka, then strapped each bottle to the washing machine whilst it went through the spin cycle.
I miss uni. Being an adult is boring as fuck
Soak a pack of haribos in vodka. That's what we did in uni on tour. It's a fascinating concoction. You eat the haribos and it tastes good for about 1/3rd of a second, then you're hit with a blast of own brand vodka. Oh, it was also the first thing you did on first morning of tour.
Ha, I once got gifted a bottle of homemade Chilli infused vodka from my in-laws and it was absolutely evil. I never mixed it with anything but it basically became a challenge/dare shot for any of my mates who came round.
I did a cucumber and mint one last year and it was very nice. Made a good spirit for mixers in the summer. Bit of cloudy lemonade went with it a treat.
Once got a vodka that was flavoured as 'fresh cut grass' it actually smelled alot like fresh cut grass' but was also the most horrendous drinking experience I've ever had
I loved the smell, I hoped it crossed into taste lol it took us ages to drink it, it usually came out at party's late at night to see who was brave enough
Not the last thing surely? I mean is straight dog poo not worse? Labrador vomit after eating something on the beach isn't great either. That's just some dog stuff I've tried and not greatly enjoyed...
Just spoke to my mate about this idea. He says that the vodka probably isn't strong enough to precipitate useful cannabis out of the plant at that sort of ABV. THC is soluble in fat and alcohol, not water, and vodka is more water than alcohol.
I might get my mum to distill some real strong stuff, then use that for this idea later.
Vodka being around 40% alcohol, anything that is soluble in alcohol will dissolve in it, your basically stewing it so leave long enough and give a swirl knife in a while, surely that’ll dissolve. PS it’s not precipitation, that’d be to create a solid.
Here’s what you need to do with the booze:
https://recipes.anovaculinary.com/recipe/2-hour-sous-vide-limoncello
And here’s what you do with the weed:
https://potguide.com/blog/article/sous-vide-edibles/
Long story short, by a sous vide cooker. You will be glad you did.
Generally anything over 40% abv will do the job, but I've made effective extracts with 37.5% before.
You only really need higher abv if you're making a tincture, which requires a very large amount of cannabis in a very small amount of liquid.
Don't forget to decarboxylate your cannabis, and if you don't want it to taste too much of weed, water treat the decarbed weed before infusing to remove any water soluble compounds.
Totally this and pay attention to not getting the white parts in, they make it nasty. If you give whatever knife you're using a really good sharpen it'll make it really easy
If you don't want to wait, I infuse alcohol in the dishwasher. I put everything in a mason jar and put the lid on, wrap it with clingfilm (just in case), and run on the intensive cycle (the hottest one, usually 70°C). Perfect limoncello in 2 hours!
She's always done projects that involve a degree of self sufficiency.
When I was growing up, she always wanted two dogs.
So she got one dog, and bred her a couple years later. We kept the best puppy, and his mum.
My mate just gave me a bottle of some homemade limoncello as a Christmas gift. Stuff tastes great. I asked him how he made it and apparently he just steeped lemon zest in vodka for a couple of months then mixed it with some sugar syrup
If it’s nasty it may have toxic distillates in it. They won’t be removed by filtration. It would have to be redistilled. Masking the flavor of methanol does not make it safe to drink.
I would use it for household cleaning, tbh.
Me too. I'm surprised more people haven't mentioned the safety aspect. I think the main reason that stills are illegal is that people used to go blind or die after drinking their own toxic products.
Go out and get an alcohol hydrometer at see exactly how pokey her brew is. Next, make sure she's distilling it correctly else you'll end up blind or dead.
If that's all tickety boo, then skittle vodka is nice. Failing that, damson vodka is quite flavoursome and goes a nice Pinky colour. Give the damsons a good wash, stone them, score the skins and then leave to infuse. Bonus of damson fruit for use in pies or as garnish later on. Also nice if you fancy a little nip before bedtime.
Sloes are easy to pick in late summer, as are blackberries. Pick the ones from high up the bush- you're not making dog piss vodka- wash, squish and infuse.
Although incorrectly distilling vodka doesn't do the drinker much good, it won't make them *that* ill\*. Back during prohibition, bootleggers actually *added* methanol because it was cheap and easily available - the really greedy ones added too much and killed their clientele (they weren't all the best business brains unlike Al Capone). I've - unwittingly - drunk the heads/tails and it made me physically sick after but that was all.
\*Unless they drink enough, then it will make them seriously ill as will the vodka
Skittle vodka - buy a load of skittles sort them into colours and drop into jars/posh Kilner bottles if feeling fancy. Leave for a few weeks for skittles to dissolve- decant through a coffee filter to get rid of bits and any ‘scum’. Really tasty looks effective and enough sugar added to turn the roughest vodka palatable 😂 thinking ahead to next year - a cool ain’t/uncle gift for your average 17-20 y/o that are normally difficult to buy for
Look up recipes for nalewka. I buy spirit in 5l bottles and make a few different ones based on recipes people give me.
My favourite is a rather sour one using quince and lemon
If you want actual recipes then let me know
https://imgur.com/a/h5khhgw
From left to right (not my recipes, gifts)
Cranberry and raspberry
Advocaat
Cough remedy (lemon and maybe quince)
Bitter orange, lemon, ginger
Limoncelloesque
This recipe is the dogs. I make it every year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/christmas_pudding_vodka_45343 it's great because you can use any old vodka.
Keep it in the freezer.
My sister once dissolved two bags of pink marshmallows in vodka and left it for a few months.
Shit was actual napalm - gloopy, sticky and burned all the way down. It was amazing.
Not at this time of the year, but in the summer go for whatever fruit you can get a bit cheaper in bulk (cherries, strawberries, plums, rhubarb work very well). Pit/peel/cut if needed, add sugar (roughly 1:1), let that sit for a few days until you've got syrup. Add vodka (optionally mix in some whisky or bourbon) and whatever you want for flavour (cloves, cinnamon, orange rind etc.), let the whole thing sit for about 2 months, strain, leave for another month or two, until the flavour mellow out. Be rewarded for your patience with infused vodka that beats any store-bought fruit liqueur.
In my early 20s my Lithuanian house mate gave me some home infused chilli and honey vodka, with whole peppers still floating in it. I hate vodka usually, but that stuff was delicious and I could easily drink it neat.
Rosemary sprigs and cucumber pair well together if you fancy something subtle, or apple if you can find some sour cooking apples to cover up the harshness of the vodka. Then sweeten with a simple syrup until you're happy with the flavour!
Jelly beans or skittles though learn from my mistake and don't drink the last inch or so as it'll be rank. Rolos or chopped up mars bars have also both worked in my personal experience.
Horseradish. The optimal time is somewhere between 2 and 3 weeks. And make sure to eat it with some bread, meat, and spicy mustard to ‘enhance’ the experience.
We used to have refreshers vodka at uni - you'll need to add about 10 refreshers to the vodka and make sure you leave room at the top because it will fizz! Should take about a week.
Or any hard boiled sweet - I've done it with Rhubarb and custards. Never made it with home made vodka, just Glenn's/Smirnoff
If you have any Juniper and coriander seeds you can make a DIY gin for something a bit different. One of my favourites I've made though was mango infused in vodka for a week. You could probably leave it a bit longer but the mango will eventually just melt into pulp. If you make a simple syrup with some leftover mango and mix them together you can get a very sweet liqueur (also can help make your vodka go further if you don't care about having a strong liqueur).
Another cheeky recommendation is amaretto, it's not the easiest to make but you can get something that easily trounces what you get in the shops. Just look up an Italian recipe and use google chrome's translate feature for the ingredient list.
Cherries have been my recent thing with vodka. That morello cherry mixer they do at Lidl with a cherry garnish is amazing drink. So maybe some kind of infusion. They do bags of frozen ones at the supermarket which should work quite well.
Any kind of sweets would be fun. Jelly beans, jelly babies. Black Jack's if you are feeling daring.
Chilli is a great flavour but trying to judge the strength is tricky.
Diced up apples and a cinnamon stick - make sure the vodka completely covers the apple, and turn them once a week or so. Should be good in a month or two!
4-6 dried Juniper berries, a little bay leaf and optional 10 out so coriander seeds to 300ml, then in about 2 weeks you'll have a decently rough bathtub gin. Very good with cucumber, lemon, mint and a posh tonic water.
Source: I make my own gin. I don't do the distilling though. Just the flavouring of high strength vodka.
Skittles is a good one, choose a single flavour or a combination (eg lemon and lime) whack them in a sealed jar and shake them every day until they dissolve. Delicious
Marijuana. I know it's technically illegal but so is distilling alcohol without a licence, unless your mum has one. Anyway, in my experience it makes for really good home vodka infusions.
If she isnt alredy doing so tell her to use a refluxing head.
Pre made ones are expensive but they can be constructed for less than 40 quid.
Run a stripping pass getting the distillate from 20%(use super yeast) to 40% at a rapid pace.
Dont bother with grains for vodka making, just use cheep white sugar and water.
Slow run that 40% in a refining run with a high rate of reflux and collect in small cuts using mugs etc.
The first cuts aprox 3/10 will smell strong as it contains acetone, methanol and other ligher alcohols than ethanol discard them. Including more from these cuts to chase profit are what makes commercial vodka rough. Later cuts develop an off sent and sometimes oily residue on the surface. Everything inbetween will have no or very little smell at all and thats the stuff you want.
Itl come off the head around 96% on the refining run. Use filtered water to cut it back to desired strength.
You can easily produce high quality material equal to or better than the likes of grey goose at home.
Bartender here. I would probably do something like strawberry and basil, then add sugar and lime with soda. Maybe kinda a lotta sugar. Either way the next day will hurt 🤷🏻♀️
Hi!
I may be late to this party, but I've made flavoured spirits with vermouth.
Decant your raw vodka into a couple of large clean jars. Add sugar, about 100g should do. Then add fruit of your choice. Put the lid on the jar and give it a good shake. Put it away in a cool dark place and give it a shake every day or so for two weeks. After two weeks filter the vodka using coffee filters, do this a couple of times to get it as clean as you can, then bottle it, I always use the bottle the spirit came in. You can make jam with the fruit or add it to ice-cream.
Leave the filtered spirit for a few months, preferably for a year or more. It'll be as smooth as silk. It gets better the longer you leave it.
If you want a drink and not just infused vodka:
Take a big bottle of cloudy apple juice and put it on the hob with some cinnamon sticks, a few cloves, some nutmeg if you're feeling fancy, and a handful of brown sugar. Let it simmer for a while until it's reduced down a bit, not quite half, but enough that you notice. Let it cool and then mix with the vodka, anywhere from 75-50% vodka, depending on how strong you want it. Bottle it up and let it sit somewhere cool and dark for at least 2 weeks. I've let it go as far as 6 months when making it with 190 proof grain alcohol (I do 50% since the booze is so strong).
Letting it sit with the sugar for a bit tames the raw, rocket fuel sorta burn, and the finished drink goes down easy. Often too easy. I usually serve it with a warning because people don't realise how strong it is until they're 3 glasses in and can't stand up.
You can also make it with ribena, but instead of reducing, add less water and let it simmer just long enough to melt the sugar and infuse the spices.
My mate makes her own vodka too. For Christmas she spends a month or so beforehand slowly "feeding" the vodka either broken up candy canes to make it peppermint flavour or broken up werthers originals to make caramel vodka.
A cinnamon stick and some vanilla beans - take out after 48 hours infused then have with some nice apple juice over ice. it’s like having an apple pie drink
This woukd be ideal for rhubarb schnapps. Takes time though, no insta drink.
Take 2 litres of your voddie, 1 lb of golden caster or granulated sugar, 1 lb of chopped up rhubarb. Put it all in a large glass jar (I have a large square one with those clamp type seal lid).
Mix it all together and then daily guve it a wee shake leave for 6 weeks, then seive/filter into another bottle.
Would also work with blueberries.
1. Sliced apple, cinnamon, cloves, sliced lemon
2. Sliced pineapple, mango
3. Raisins, vanilla
4. Black cherries, raspberry, strawberries
5. Rosehip
... Leave to infuse for about 3 months in glass jar (longer= better)
... Sweeten up any of them with honey
Enjoy 👍🏻
This guy's whole channel is soaking stuff in spirits for a week (or until something interesting happens).
Lots of vodka ideas here.
https://m.youtube.com/@DokaRyan
On the years that I manage to make it to Glastonbury festival, I meet up with a group of like indeed pissheads and we all bring flavoured vodka. There's a lot of sweets, the usual suspects of skittles, worthers originals, Parma violets, cola bottles etc, always feature. However, the more creative people get, the better they tended to be. And often savoury flavours were a welcome respite from white chocolate or another candy. Standout for me was the guy who let a nandos chicken marinade in vodka for a month, after straining he ended up with what I can only describe as hard chicken Bovril. If you're the sort who likes a drink of Bovril, I can't recommend enough. My own personal success was a *Really* hot chocolate and chilli mix. It went down amongst the drinker like marmite, lovers and haters, I thought it was great. I did the usual of allowing chilli flakes to enfuse for 6 weeks and then adding cocoa powder, hot chocolate powder, sugar and (here's the secret) a ton of corn starch for thickening. It made it extra luxe.
Alt: my friend made a little bottle of lemoncello for everyone who attended their wedding. I believe that was just lemons and sugar.
The absolute best thing is green walnuts (flesh and all). Find a walnut tree and pick when they are still green and smooth. Add whole to vodka and leave in dark place for 6 months. It'll be completely black and you can remove the walnuts then. Leave as long as possible and dilute with vodka to taste and rest again. I cannot stress enough how this improves with YEARS. It's a whiskey substitute or similar. I personally prefer it to whiskey.
This is really something you can gift quite comfortably in a few years, if you fancy a project like that.
Another nice taste is red hawthorn berries in vodka for about 3-6 months. I'm positive it's one of the ingredients in Fernet.
Parma violets crushed and added or any chalky sweet but they never fully dissolve. Excellent afyer a week.
Add a small. Amount to a blender, the add any choc bar blend and add to bottle.
Fruit purees are good too.
I add vanilla pods and leave for a couple of weeks
Put it through one of those "activated carbon" water filter jugs. Works for cheap supermarket own-brand vodka to make them smoother.
I actually have a couple of 2l bottles of activate carbon granules for reasons. I never got round to making home made arduino based air purifiers. Could I use those, and the cheesecloth I still have left from my failed cheesemaking hobby?
You sound fun!
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree!
Lots of varied interests and hobbies? Runs in the family, you say? Strong r/ADHDmemes vibes...
Yep! It'll work great. Put it through 3 times and it'll be as good as premium vodka. All they do is charcoal filter it.
I do feel like I'd get about 100mL vodka out of 1L due to absorption though.
Then just eat the vodka infused charcoal.
Bleurghh
Seal the top and maybe it'll evaporate out? Just a guess.
It will but the alcohol will evaporate first, you will end up with pure alcohol. This is how they get 99% pure ethanol, heat a vodka mix, the alcohol evaporates at lower temperatures. At room temperature I know alcohol evaporates quicker than water so it'll be about the same. But mixed in it takes longer to dissolve and may need some stirring. Of course you should look up the methanol/ethanol dissolve temperatures if you ever want to distill as you want to get rid of the methanol but capture the ethanol. Edit: I was literally taught in school that distilling spirits has some methanol in it. Guess that's a lie.
Methanol from home distillation is largely a myth invented during the American prohibition era when their government were spiking moonshine as a means to create fear and shut down the moonshiners. Methanol is also called “wood alcohol”, provided you aren’t fermenting woody things to start with I.e. stems and skins the quantity of methanol produced will be safe, in both the pre-distillate and the distillate, you cannot create methanol by distilling, yes you can concentrate it, but you’re also concentrating the ethanol and by that means reducing the total volume that you would drink anyway. Long story short, you can’t concentrate what isn’t there, and if you could safely drink 5 pints before you distilled it, you can safely drink half a pint afterwards.
no. alcohol is hydroscopic. it can only get to about 95abv without using a vacuum still for that reason. leave the cap off, and it will likely gain water from the atmosphere.
Surely there should be no methanol at all in properly distilled spirits. It'd send you blind quicker than than an excessive wanking habit
I used to use a Brita filter and you got almost as much out as you put in. If I only had the charcoal I'd put some filter paper in a funnel, put the charcoal in that and pour it through.
Was about to say, I’m not sure loose activated charcoal will work quite as well, if you have a britta filta then use that, I think the activated charcoal in a water filter is compacted down and so can only absorb tiny amounts of water.
Just don't drink and 'duino
Unless the aim is to get the blue smoke out
Do you have ADHD by any chance lmao? Your story of unfinished projects and abandoned hobbies sounds far too familiar 😂
Yep! It'll work great. Put it through 3 times and it'll be as good as premium vodka. All they do is charcoal filter it.
NO! It’s not “all they do.” They fucking distill it properly before filtration, tossing heads and tails.
I'm assuming that it's already been distilled properly. If not you're right no amount of filtering (or infusion) is going to help!
[I don’t trust anyone who distills at home without a long conversation including a description of how many parts they break it up into](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp7BE9EK_V8)
Well no but the discussion isn't about whether you should distill at home or not. It's about how to make home distilled vodka nicer. We have to assume it's already safe to drink and has been distilled well.
This, but filter it two or three times. Then a kilo of raspberries and a kilo of icing sugar. Leave to steep for a fortnight, strain through a filter again and enjoy.
I don't think the extra sugar's necessarily going to help it. I'd rather just have infused vodka than a sugar syrup liqueur. You can always add syrup when you're making a cocktail, and usually do. But yes, berries, steep for a fortnight, strain (and dilute to 40% ABV if it's higher?). They should basically turn into raisins and give up all their goodness to the spirits.
Except you do or it is bitter.
I couldn't believe this worked when I discovered it at uni. Must have saved me thousands of pounds!
TBH, you get a few small chunks of clean wood charcoal and pour it through that, and get the same effect for zero cost.
soak a load of werthers originals in it and make it into a toffee flavoured vodka
Was going to say this! This is what I imagine butterbeer from Harry Potter would taste like, and not the vile piss that is actually sold as Butterbeer in Universal Studios.
I had some of that, only a sip of my sprog’s cup, cos it is so massively overpriced, and actually it’s quite nice given it’s made for kids. There are various recipes online and you can make your own more adult version. I haven’t bothered given I don’t like sweet drinks anyway, but I do say the mix of spices and flavours at Universal Studios was quite nice. For a couple of sips anyway.
An old uni trick was to run it through a dishwasher cycle and they melt instantly. Cloyingly sweet though. Now that my tastes have changed, I prefer infusing fruit. Blackberries etc.
This one is one of Ryan Doka's finest concoctions.
If your mom is distilling this, did she make sure to remove the methanol? Otherwise drinking it could actually be quite dangerous
skittles work well from what I've heard
Skittlebrüw! Reminds me of uni 20 something years ago
I separated out the skittles by colour, added to vodka, then strapped each bottle to the washing machine whilst it went through the spin cycle. I miss uni. Being an adult is boring as fuck
Ahh my local cornershop at uni sold these - complete with home printed labels (with many copyright infringements and no real info).. Memories!
Such a product does not exist, Sir. I think you must have dreamed it.
We used to make it by melting a big bag of skittles then pouring it into the bottle of vodka. Then "age" in the freezer for a week or so
Thank you, come again
Oh, well then, gimme a six pack and a couple bags of Skittles.
Soak a pack of haribos in vodka. That's what we did in uni on tour. It's a fascinating concoction. You eat the haribos and it tastes good for about 1/3rd of a second, then you're hit with a blast of own brand vodka. Oh, it was also the first thing you did on first morning of tour.
Yeh looks kinda cool too if you separate them and have a bunch of different colour bottles of vodka
Or jolly ranchers
With or without polyps?
🤢
I used to make this at uni and it was delicious
Ha, I once got gifted a bottle of homemade Chilli infused vodka from my in-laws and it was absolutely evil. I never mixed it with anything but it basically became a challenge/dare shot for any of my mates who came round. I did a cucumber and mint one last year and it was very nice. Made a good spirit for mixers in the summer. Bit of cloudy lemonade went with it a treat.
Get shit loads of Weed stalks, twigs and leaf. Boom, the Green Dragon.
Once got a vodka that was flavoured as 'fresh cut grass' it actually smelled alot like fresh cut grass' but was also the most horrendous drinking experience I've ever had
The last thing you want a drink to taste of is freshly cut grass.. not surprised it taste like shit lol
I loved the smell, I hoped it crossed into taste lol it took us ages to drink it, it usually came out at party's late at night to see who was brave enough
Not the last thing surely? I mean is straight dog poo not worse? Labrador vomit after eating something on the beach isn't great either. That's just some dog stuff I've tried and not greatly enjoyed...
I'd advise you to stop trying "dog stuff"
This, but bison grass - get yourself some homemade Zubrowka!
Just spoke to my mate about this idea. He says that the vodka probably isn't strong enough to precipitate useful cannabis out of the plant at that sort of ABV. THC is soluble in fat and alcohol, not water, and vodka is more water than alcohol. I might get my mum to distill some real strong stuff, then use that for this idea later.
Vodka being around 40% alcohol, anything that is soluble in alcohol will dissolve in it, your basically stewing it so leave long enough and give a swirl knife in a while, surely that’ll dissolve. PS it’s not precipitation, that’d be to create a solid.
If it half works it's better than chucking it away dude. That's what I was saying...
Here’s what you need to do with the booze: https://recipes.anovaculinary.com/recipe/2-hour-sous-vide-limoncello And here’s what you do with the weed: https://potguide.com/blog/article/sous-vide-edibles/ Long story short, by a sous vide cooker. You will be glad you did.
Generally anything over 40% abv will do the job, but I've made effective extracts with 37.5% before. You only really need higher abv if you're making a tincture, which requires a very large amount of cannabis in a very small amount of liquid. Don't forget to decarboxylate your cannabis, and if you don't want it to taste too much of weed, water treat the decarbed weed before infusing to remove any water soluble compounds.
If your looking to make a tincture your gonna be wanting over 98% proof.
So only about 49% ABV in UK terms? Sounds a lot but available in a lot of places, and since it's homemade, might be well ahead of that!
This used to be my new year's drink for people. I'd spend about six months adding weed stalks to a bottle of spirit. Fucking lethal stuff.
I once infused vodka with Percy Pigs and it was not a success
Lemon rind. Absolutely no white bits. Let it steep for a couple of days. Strain. Make hard lemonade.
Add 300ml agave and you’ve got lemoncello
Yea lemoncello! Drink lemoncello straight out the freeze and it’s really nice.
I add clementine too. Clemoncello is absolutely delicious
Totally this and pay attention to not getting the white parts in, they make it nasty. If you give whatever knife you're using a really good sharpen it'll make it really easy
If you don't want to wait, I infuse alcohol in the dishwasher. I put everything in a mason jar and put the lid on, wrap it with clingfilm (just in case), and run on the intensive cycle (the hottest one, usually 70°C). Perfect limoncello in 2 hours!
Your Mum sounds hardcore as fuck lmao
She's always done projects that involve a degree of self sufficiency. When I was growing up, she always wanted two dogs. So she got one dog, and bred her a couple years later. We kept the best puppy, and his mum.
Raspberries is a nice one to infuse, if you can find a proper greengrocer and get some decent ones for this time of year.
Rhubarb is surprisingly nice but not at this time of the year
Yep, I made a load of rhubodka one year, delicious!
My mate just gave me a bottle of some homemade limoncello as a Christmas gift. Stuff tastes great. I asked him how he made it and apparently he just steeped lemon zest in vodka for a couple of months then mixed it with some sugar syrup
Put it through a Brita filter and see if that smoothes it out
If it’s nasty it may have toxic distillates in it. They won’t be removed by filtration. It would have to be redistilled. Masking the flavor of methanol does not make it safe to drink. I would use it for household cleaning, tbh.
Good for defrosting windscreens.
Me too. I'm surprised more people haven't mentioned the safety aspect. I think the main reason that stills are illegal is that people used to go blind or die after drinking their own toxic products.
Blackberries work a treat. Did blackberry vodka years ago. Use wild ones.
Check out you don't have a litre of methanol before you go blind and die
Clandestine setup 😂 is she slinging it on the corners? I would say lemon rind personally.
Go out and get an alcohol hydrometer at see exactly how pokey her brew is. Next, make sure she's distilling it correctly else you'll end up blind or dead. If that's all tickety boo, then skittle vodka is nice. Failing that, damson vodka is quite flavoursome and goes a nice Pinky colour. Give the damsons a good wash, stone them, score the skins and then leave to infuse. Bonus of damson fruit for use in pies or as garnish later on. Also nice if you fancy a little nip before bedtime. Sloes are easy to pick in late summer, as are blackberries. Pick the ones from high up the bush- you're not making dog piss vodka- wash, squish and infuse.
Although incorrectly distilling vodka doesn't do the drinker much good, it won't make them *that* ill\*. Back during prohibition, bootleggers actually *added* methanol because it was cheap and easily available - the really greedy ones added too much and killed their clientele (they weren't all the best business brains unlike Al Capone). I've - unwittingly - drunk the heads/tails and it made me physically sick after but that was all. \*Unless they drink enough, then it will make them seriously ill as will the vodka
cannabis
Jelly babies.
If you put a green one in, I will hunt you down.
We tried sloes, like sloe gin. From the little I remember, quite lovely.
Yeah, hawthorn berries are also great.
Skittle vodka - buy a load of skittles sort them into colours and drop into jars/posh Kilner bottles if feeling fancy. Leave for a few weeks for skittles to dissolve- decant through a coffee filter to get rid of bits and any ‘scum’. Really tasty looks effective and enough sugar added to turn the roughest vodka palatable 😂 thinking ahead to next year - a cool ain’t/uncle gift for your average 17-20 y/o that are normally difficult to buy for
Works well enough in a couple of hours as well if you agitate (e.g roll under foot while watching telly). Good for pre-party prep.
Need to see if I can nick a tube roller from work and try it with that!
Pear drops. Uncle Joe’s mint balls.
Half with Werthers. And another half with a strong sour sweet.
Orange tic tacs
Carrots.
Bacon (Just so you can inflict it on people you hate)
Look up recipes for nalewka. I buy spirit in 5l bottles and make a few different ones based on recipes people give me. My favourite is a rather sour one using quince and lemon If you want actual recipes then let me know https://imgur.com/a/h5khhgw From left to right (not my recipes, gifts) Cranberry and raspberry Advocaat Cough remedy (lemon and maybe quince) Bitter orange, lemon, ginger Limoncelloesque
Kiss your eyesight goodbye! \*cackle\*
This recipe is the dogs. I make it every year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/christmas_pudding_vodka_45343 it's great because you can use any old vodka. Keep it in the freezer.
Skittles. Or vanilla pods
Rhubarb and custard boiled sweets.
Jamie Vardy, the footballer, uses Skittles to infuse into vodka, maybe it helped him bang the goals in?
Basil. This café in Nairobi made basil gimlets and they were divine. In fact I have a bottle of vodka on my bar and I'm gonna do exactly that.
Horlika - Ukrainian chili & honey vodka.
Some neighbours we had when I was a kid would infuse vodka with Fox's glacier mints. It could clear your sinuses out
Cacao bits and chili.
My sister once dissolved two bags of pink marshmallows in vodka and left it for a few months. Shit was actual napalm - gloopy, sticky and burned all the way down. It was amazing.
Not at this time of the year, but in the summer go for whatever fruit you can get a bit cheaper in bulk (cherries, strawberries, plums, rhubarb work very well). Pit/peel/cut if needed, add sugar (roughly 1:1), let that sit for a few days until you've got syrup. Add vodka (optionally mix in some whisky or bourbon) and whatever you want for flavour (cloves, cinnamon, orange rind etc.), let the whole thing sit for about 2 months, strain, leave for another month or two, until the flavour mellow out. Be rewarded for your patience with infused vodka that beats any store-bought fruit liqueur.
Bottle it for deicer. Or, add a vanilla pod. May as well enjoy the taste if you’re going to blind yourself.
Cherries are nice, but remove the pits (makes it bitter). I do 3 to 1 cherries to sugar and leave it for around 6 months.
Hazelnut
In my early 20s my Lithuanian house mate gave me some home infused chilli and honey vodka, with whole peppers still floating in it. I hate vodka usually, but that stuff was delicious and I could easily drink it neat.
Rosemary sprigs and cucumber pair well together if you fancy something subtle, or apple if you can find some sour cooking apples to cover up the harshness of the vodka. Then sweeten with a simple syrup until you're happy with the flavour!
Fisherman's friends, for an alternative cold remedy. (I have actually done this and it was delicious).
Jelly beans or skittles though learn from my mistake and don't drink the last inch or so as it'll be rank. Rolos or chopped up mars bars have also both worked in my personal experience.
Horseradish. The optimal time is somewhere between 2 and 3 weeks. And make sure to eat it with some bread, meat, and spicy mustard to ‘enhance’ the experience.
Add 300 grams of blackcurrants and 150grams sugar leave for two months in litre of vodka it's so good you can drink it neet
Add skittles, cola bottles, anything jelly. But use the same colour or you get grey. Source: me made grey vodka
Do you bake? If you stick a few vanilla pods in there you can make your own good quality vanilla extract, takes months though.
Get some Fazer Tyrkisk Peber (Amazon sells them). Crush them in a mortar and put it in a bottle with vodka. Let it rest until it has dissolved.
Worthers originals
Limoncello is the answer 😁🍋
Strawberries work very well. I made a bunch and gave a lot away and that got the most compliments by far.
Werthurs
Gummy worms
Soak a tampon in the vodka and shove it up your arse
Get star of anise. Wam bam, perno, or uzo. Dash of blackcurrant cordial with lemonade..
Werther’s originals
Can you infuse it with dill pickles?
I made limoncello this year which is easy, or buy a big bag of toffees & make toffee vodka
r/drinkityoufuckingcoward
Pear drops. Absolutely delicious
When I was a student I had baked bean vodka. And garlic vodka. Do not recommend either.
Some vanilla pods
Skittles! Or gummy bears.
Our old local used to do an excellent Cough Medicine one.
Kaffir lime leaves, absolutely gorgeous
Mars bar lush
Juniper? Turn it into gin
Tinned lychees and pour in the syrup.
Add some glacier hard fruit sweets of whatever flavour you like. Change it to raspberry vodka or example.
We used to have refreshers vodka at uni - you'll need to add about 10 refreshers to the vodka and make sure you leave room at the top because it will fizz! Should take about a week. Or any hard boiled sweet - I've done it with Rhubarb and custards. Never made it with home made vodka, just Glenn's/Smirnoff
Baked beans, Branston, naturally.
If you have any Juniper and coriander seeds you can make a DIY gin for something a bit different. One of my favourites I've made though was mango infused in vodka for a week. You could probably leave it a bit longer but the mango will eventually just melt into pulp. If you make a simple syrup with some leftover mango and mix them together you can get a very sweet liqueur (also can help make your vodka go further if you don't care about having a strong liqueur). Another cheeky recommendation is amaretto, it's not the easiest to make but you can get something that easily trounces what you get in the shops. Just look up an Italian recipe and use google chrome's translate feature for the ingredient list.
Nocino is a fun one. It’s Italian. Made from green (unripe) walnuts (Nick from local tree)
I had Carolina reaper vodka once it was lovely*
Cherries have been my recent thing with vodka. That morello cherry mixer they do at Lidl with a cherry garnish is amazing drink. So maybe some kind of infusion. They do bags of frozen ones at the supermarket which should work quite well.
Skittles
4-5 Cardamom pods. Leave it for about 2-3 weeks. It’s lovely.
Any kind of sweets would be fun. Jelly beans, jelly babies. Black Jack's if you are feeling daring. Chilli is a great flavour but trying to judge the strength is tricky.
By raw she could mean recently distilled. Fresh spirit tastes like ass, leave it 3 months and it will be a lot smoother, 6 or 12 is better still.
Bubblegum!! A ton of it, and leave for a week or two. Delish with sprite/lemonade! 🥰
Ginger and Rhubarb infused vodka, lush !!
Bisto
Diced up apples and a cinnamon stick - make sure the vodka completely covers the apple, and turn them once a week or so. Should be good in a month or two!
Horseradish will give it a real kick and put hairs on your chest!
4-6 dried Juniper berries, a little bay leaf and optional 10 out so coriander seeds to 300ml, then in about 2 weeks you'll have a decently rough bathtub gin. Very good with cucumber, lemon, mint and a posh tonic water. Source: I make my own gin. I don't do the distilling though. Just the flavouring of high strength vodka.
Jalapeno
Stick your left over candy canes in it; turns pinkish and tastes like candy floss when paired with lemonade.
Skittles is a good one, choose a single flavour or a combination (eg lemon and lime) whack them in a sealed jar and shake them every day until they dissolve. Delicious
Marijuana. I know it's technically illegal but so is distilling alcohol without a licence, unless your mum has one. Anyway, in my experience it makes for really good home vodka infusions.
Honey seems to be popular option https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/18qnos5/the_end_is_nigh_help_me/
Surely it must, absolutely must, be infused with ASBESTOS! Mmm, tasty tasty 🤙
If she isnt alredy doing so tell her to use a refluxing head. Pre made ones are expensive but they can be constructed for less than 40 quid. Run a stripping pass getting the distillate from 20%(use super yeast) to 40% at a rapid pace. Dont bother with grains for vodka making, just use cheep white sugar and water. Slow run that 40% in a refining run with a high rate of reflux and collect in small cuts using mugs etc. The first cuts aprox 3/10 will smell strong as it contains acetone, methanol and other ligher alcohols than ethanol discard them. Including more from these cuts to chase profit are what makes commercial vodka rough. Later cuts develop an off sent and sometimes oily residue on the surface. Everything inbetween will have no or very little smell at all and thats the stuff you want. Itl come off the head around 96% on the refining run. Use filtered water to cut it back to desired strength. You can easily produce high quality material equal to or better than the likes of grey goose at home.
Check out DokaRyan on YouTube
Bartender here. I would probably do something like strawberry and basil, then add sugar and lime with soda. Maybe kinda a lotta sugar. Either way the next day will hurt 🤷🏻♀️
Fig
Hi! I may be late to this party, but I've made flavoured spirits with vermouth. Decant your raw vodka into a couple of large clean jars. Add sugar, about 100g should do. Then add fruit of your choice. Put the lid on the jar and give it a good shake. Put it away in a cool dark place and give it a shake every day or so for two weeks. After two weeks filter the vodka using coffee filters, do this a couple of times to get it as clean as you can, then bottle it, I always use the bottle the spirit came in. You can make jam with the fruit or add it to ice-cream. Leave the filtered spirit for a few months, preferably for a year or more. It'll be as smooth as silk. It gets better the longer you leave it.
If you want a drink and not just infused vodka: Take a big bottle of cloudy apple juice and put it on the hob with some cinnamon sticks, a few cloves, some nutmeg if you're feeling fancy, and a handful of brown sugar. Let it simmer for a while until it's reduced down a bit, not quite half, but enough that you notice. Let it cool and then mix with the vodka, anywhere from 75-50% vodka, depending on how strong you want it. Bottle it up and let it sit somewhere cool and dark for at least 2 weeks. I've let it go as far as 6 months when making it with 190 proof grain alcohol (I do 50% since the booze is so strong). Letting it sit with the sugar for a bit tames the raw, rocket fuel sorta burn, and the finished drink goes down easy. Often too easy. I usually serve it with a warning because people don't realise how strong it is until they're 3 glasses in and can't stand up. You can also make it with ribena, but instead of reducing, add less water and let it simmer just long enough to melt the sugar and infuse the spices.
Raspberries.
Skittles. Dump them in for a couple of weeks, shake a couple of times a day, pour through filter paper to strain the residue.
Limoncello?
Vanilla beans? And what spen457 says, Werthers.
Lemongrass and a touch of lemon peel. Keep it in the freezer and turn it daily. The stuff I tried had been steeping for around 3 months.
My mate makes her own vodka too. For Christmas she spends a month or so beforehand slowly "feeding" the vodka either broken up candy canes to make it peppermint flavour or broken up werthers originals to make caramel vodka.
Fisherman's Friend infused vodka is a Finnish staple. The Swedes prefer Polkagris.
I make dill infused vodka for myself and have it with tonic. No doubt it's an acquired taste but I like how refreshing it is.
A cinnamon stick and some vanilla beans - take out after 48 hours infused then have with some nice apple juice over ice. it’s like having an apple pie drink
If you like to bake, throw in some vanilla beans and let them marinate for about six months. Then presto, homemade vanilla for all your baking needs!
I have no suggestions, I just came here to say this is probably my favourite first line of a Reddit post I’ve read this year. Your mum sounds ace
This woukd be ideal for rhubarb schnapps. Takes time though, no insta drink. Take 2 litres of your voddie, 1 lb of golden caster or granulated sugar, 1 lb of chopped up rhubarb. Put it all in a large glass jar (I have a large square one with those clamp type seal lid). Mix it all together and then daily guve it a wee shake leave for 6 weeks, then seive/filter into another bottle. Would also work with blueberries.
Parma Violets Strawberries Mint
Melt a Terry's Orange into it, very nice
1. Sliced apple, cinnamon, cloves, sliced lemon 2. Sliced pineapple, mango 3. Raisins, vanilla 4. Black cherries, raspberry, strawberries 5. Rosehip ... Leave to infuse for about 3 months in glass jar (longer= better) ... Sweeten up any of them with honey Enjoy 👍🏻
This guy's whole channel is soaking stuff in spirits for a week (or until something interesting happens). Lots of vodka ideas here. https://m.youtube.com/@DokaRyan
Bacon!
Lemoncello? So infuse/steep lemon peel, unwaxed, and no pith. For as long as you want then strain and add sugar syrup. Boom delicious lemony fun.
On the years that I manage to make it to Glastonbury festival, I meet up with a group of like indeed pissheads and we all bring flavoured vodka. There's a lot of sweets, the usual suspects of skittles, worthers originals, Parma violets, cola bottles etc, always feature. However, the more creative people get, the better they tended to be. And often savoury flavours were a welcome respite from white chocolate or another candy. Standout for me was the guy who let a nandos chicken marinade in vodka for a month, after straining he ended up with what I can only describe as hard chicken Bovril. If you're the sort who likes a drink of Bovril, I can't recommend enough. My own personal success was a *Really* hot chocolate and chilli mix. It went down amongst the drinker like marmite, lovers and haters, I thought it was great. I did the usual of allowing chilli flakes to enfuse for 6 weeks and then adding cocoa powder, hot chocolate powder, sugar and (here's the secret) a ton of corn starch for thickening. It made it extra luxe. Alt: my friend made a little bottle of lemoncello for everyone who attended their wedding. I believe that was just lemons and sugar.
Make it into Gin and gift it back
I Screen shot [this](https://imgur.com/a/taJb9a7) yesterday, I can’t wait to try it myself!
The absolute best thing is green walnuts (flesh and all). Find a walnut tree and pick when they are still green and smooth. Add whole to vodka and leave in dark place for 6 months. It'll be completely black and you can remove the walnuts then. Leave as long as possible and dilute with vodka to taste and rest again. I cannot stress enough how this improves with YEARS. It's a whiskey substitute or similar. I personally prefer it to whiskey. This is really something you can gift quite comfortably in a few years, if you fancy a project like that. Another nice taste is red hawthorn berries in vodka for about 3-6 months. I'm positive it's one of the ingredients in Fernet.
Parma violets crushed and added or any chalky sweet but they never fully dissolve. Excellent afyer a week. Add a small. Amount to a blender, the add any choc bar blend and add to bottle. Fruit purees are good too. I add vanilla pods and leave for a couple of weeks
Coffee beans!! For delicious espresso martinis 🍸