Infusing Alcohol under Sous Vide

• Preparation Time
  10 minutes
• Cooking Time
  1-3 hours
• Temperature
  130°F –160°F
• Difficulty
  Easy

A coworker told me about some Jalapeno-infused tequila that he had at a restaurant and I decided I’d like to try that. I did some searching online and I found a lot of people infusing things in alcohol. “Just cut up your fruit/vegetables/whatever, put in a jar, pour over with alcohol of choice to cover, and leave it in your fridge for a month.”

I didn’t want to wait a month. There has to be a better way, I thought.

I like to drink tea. When you make tea, especially if you use loose tea leaves, you get the water hot (boiling for black tea) and then let it pull the flavor out of the leaves. You strain it after just a few minutes. Why couldn’t I do the same with alcohol?

Well because alcohol likes evaporating quite quickly, especially when heated. If I boiled alcohol to infuse it with flavors, a lot of the alcohol itself would evaporate out. Not all of it, but a lot. What if I could heat it up but not lose any of the alcohol to the air?

So, I got a bottle of vodka and, in my case, some jalapenos, and chopped the jalapenos roughly. Then I got out my vacuum sealer and made a very large bag – when sealing a bag of liquid, you need a considerable amount of headroom. I put the jalapeno pieces in, poured the bottle of tequila in, and then sealed the bag. I infused it at 160°F for about 6 hours, then took the vacuum sealed bag out and chilled it in the refrigerator to allow any vapors inside the bag to re-condense. Once it was cold, I cut a slit in the bag and used a funnel to put it back in the bottle it had come from.

Perfect success! The liquid smelled spicy, it still had all the lovely taste and effects of tequila with a delightful jalapeno taste, and most pleasantly of all it had a wonderful green tint. I was exceptionally pleased with what I could accomplish in one night instead of a month.

This is under techniques because the sky is the limit when it comes to this. You can do fruits. Or vegetables. I made Earl Grey Tea infused Vodka just to mess with it. The same formula applies to any combination of alcohol and flavoring agent you can think of. I wonder if it might even be possible to make homemade vanilla extract in just a few hours this way. I’ll have to test it.

Make it? Love it?