Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Things are really heating up now! Jalapeño pepper vodka

This week, we've decided to try something a little different: a jalapeño pepper vodka infusion. The Mad Scienticians are big fans of spicy foods; in fact, behind ethyl alcohol and caffeine, capsaicin is our third favorite molecule.

That said, I am a little intimidated by this experiment. Many of our previous infusions have provided mild or sweet flavors to neutralize the kick of the vodka. Jalapeños, on the other hand, are celebrated for their own bite. Will the combination of these two ingredients create a spicy but otherwise neutral shot, or will they combine their powers to create a higher evil than they could separately? Only experimentation will tell.

We began by rinsing two jalapeño peppers and slicing them in half. Some would say to leave them whole; we say, where's the fun in that? Let's heat this bad boy up.



Much like the recent spearmint vodka experiment, this one was fairly straightforward. Once cut in half, we poured the vodka over the peppers.



Interestingly, the bottoms of the peppers sank to the bottom, while the tops floated. It seems that the stems are more buoyant than the rest of the jalapeño.



We're going to give this a few days and see what happens.

9 comments:

Gabú said...

Hmmm. I bit Ginger would be an interesting infusion - it's simultaneously spicy and sweet. I've been drinking cinnamon/ginger tea a lot lately and it's delicious.
That's my two-cent suggestion.

Brendan said...

Good idea! We'll add that to our prospective future experiments.

Heather said...

Ever consider mushroom vodka?

Anonymous said...

I've actually tried ginger...

It turned out very "earthy," not in a bad way, but not as "ginger-y" as I'd hoped, and not spicy at all, really.

I may try it again with shredded ginger, or at least peeled ginger. I had used slices of whole ginger root, and a few people guessed that might have been why.

Keep in mind, though, that most of the flavour in ginger root is just under the skin.

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Anonymous said...

I just tried jalapeno vodka at a restaurant in OR. Great! the waiter said he used 4 different ingredients. ginger, peppercorn, jalapenos and unsure of the last ingredient.

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