Can I “fat wash” whiskey without a sous vide setup?
October 9, 2019 7:17 PM   Subscribe

This cocktail recipe calls for a sesame oil fat washed whiskey. The fat-washing directions call for sous vide-ing, but I don’t have a sous vide setup. Can I achieve the same effect without the sous vide?
posted by hapticactionnetwork to Food & Drink (6 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: You should be able to pull this off with a beer cooler sous-vide

Basically fill up a cooler with water heated to around 137-140 degrees, then drop in the baggie of whiskey and oil, shut the lid and open it up 2 hours later.

Should work fine.
posted by bitdamaged at 7:31 PM on October 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


This Serious Eats article describes a method that doesn't require sous vide:

"To fat-wash your alcohol, you just add a liquid like sesame oil or melted butter to a spirit at room temperature. Let it sit for a few hours, then chill everything in the fridge or freezer until the fat solidifies and can easily be skimmed off. The spirit retains the flavors of the fat even after you've done the skimming. "
posted by photoelectric at 7:40 PM on October 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


This is basically just a solvent extraction.

Increasing the temperature increases the rate of extraction into your ethanol solvent.

It gets complicated if you want to adjust conditions to preferentially extract more/ less of a certain solute from the oil mixture.

The 'ghetto sous vide' bitdamaged mentioned should work just fine, as is a longer lower-temp extraction proposed by photoelectric.
posted by porpoise at 11:02 AM on October 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


“Ghetto”, when used to mean “low cost”, is a racist and classist word choice.

Better replacements include: “scrappy” or “DIY” or “home made” or “low budget” or “self made” or “cobbled together”.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 5:06 PM on October 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: Thanks everybody, I’m going to try the cooler sous vide because it sounds fun.
posted by hapticactionnetwork at 9:59 PM on October 10, 2019


Williams: Ghettoes are the same all over the world. They stink.

But yes, I should have used "McGuivered" sous vide setup.
posted by porpoise at 10:00 PM on October 10, 2019


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