Thursday, December 27, 2007

Spiced cider vodka is amazing

After fifteen days and five ingredients, our spiced cider vodka was ready to sample. The infusion, which involved apples, cinnamon, orange, nutmeg, and cloves, was our most complicated to date, and had the highest standard to live up to. Often, when we throw a party in the cold winter months, Wayland crafts a delicious apple cider, slowly heating it in a crock pot with the latter four ingredients. (Often, allspice is also used, but we could not find any whole allspice in time for this infusion.) We mix the cider with a healthy dose of spiced rum, and enjoy the warming, flavorful drink.

We modified the experiment slightly from the original write-up. The cinnamon stick was intended to infuse for the full run of the experiment, but when we tasted it on day ten, we decided that the cinnamon flavor was getting too strong and removed it. However, when performing final maintenance on day fourteen, we decided that the apple had overpowered the remaining cinnamon flavor, so we added a new cinnamon stick for the final day. The final infusion schedule was as follows:

Day 1: Add one cinnamon stick and one wedged apple
Day 2: ---
Day 3: ---
Day 4: ---
Day 5: Replace apple wedges
Day 6: ---
Day 7: ---
Day 8: ---
Day 9: ---
Day 10: Add two orange wedges, replace apple, remove cinnamon
Day 11: Add three nutmeg seeds
Day 12: ---
Day 13: ---
Day 14: Add a bundle of cloves and one cinnamon stick
Day 15: Complete!

Please note that only two wedges of the orange were used, as opposed to the complete apples. The orange was intended to only provide a hint of flavor, and not be a primary component. We scored the wedges to ensure some flavor would escape the wedges' skin.



This was the sight that met us on day fifteen. The vodka had attained a burnt orange color. We strained out the ingredients and tasted it, and we were not disappointed.

"This vodka has truly captured the essence of mulled cider," Wayland wrote. "It's sweet, with no hint of burn, and the flavors interplay wonderfully for a truly cider experience."

I found that the final day's maintenance made a world of difference compared to the mid-experiment taste the day before. "The addition of cloves, and particularly, the extra day of cinnamon gives this infusion a complex flavor, exactly as we were hoping. Each flavor puts in an appearance, with the possible exception of nutmeg, but none steal the show."

We were exceptionally pleased with how the vodka had turned out. Even cold, it gave a sensation of warming. It tasted almost exactly like Wayland's spiked cider, even without any rum being involved. Though this infusion required more maintenance than any we have done previously, we feel that it was well worth the effort.

8 comments:

Jasra/Lisa said...

mmmm!

RumDood said...

Sounds fantastic! I actually started planning out an apple cider rum infusion around the same time you started putting this together, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Great work!

Anonymous said...

How much is a "bundle" of cloves? This sounds amazing, I'm going to try it as soon as possible...

Brendan said...

We didn't really measure it out; we had a 17 gram container, and about a quarter to a third of it left, so we just dumped in the remainder. For the plain clove vodka, we counted out 50 cloves, but I think we used a little less for the cider vodka.

Anonymous said...

Save me some?

Brendan said...

That can be arranged.

Anonymous said...

how would you drink this? would you drink it on the rocks, with a mixer like ginger ale, or in a martini?

Brendan said...

This is the only infusion we've made that I drink on the rocks; it's delicious that way. It could possibly be used in a martini, but I've never had the heart to mix it with anything else.