Cocktail mixers for infused booze?
September 25, 2018 1:18 PM   Subscribe

I made several different infused alcohols for a party a friend is throwing this weekend. Help me turn them into simple and great cocktails?

What I made:

- gin with blackberries in it. I usually mix this with strong ginger beer and lime juice, but there must be other options.

- bourbon with lapin cherries in it. This is so tasty by itself that I can't think of what to mix with it.

- vodka with both sweet and sour cherries in it, some with the pits in.

- vodka with dried apricots, plums and figs in it. It tastes a tiny bit like port because of the figs.

- vodka with butternut squash, raw ginger, and cinnamon sticks in it, which basically tastes like pie.

What would you mix with these? Extra credit for things that could be mixed with more than one of them.
posted by centrifugal to Food & Drink (14 answers total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
Yum!

The gin would be ideal for a bramble or a simple smash (just lightly muddle a few fresh blackberries at bottom of glass with a little fresh sage and a slice or two of lime, add a bit of lime juice, a little simple syrup if desired, top with ice and seltzer).

This same basic smash outline would work well for all of your infusions, I think -- just provide little bowls of the applicable fruits and have a build-your-own-smash bar. Fresh cherries, fresh blackberries, fresh apricot (or apricot jam -- a spoonful for each drink will do, just shake or stir), apple slices or pumpkin/apple butter for the butternut infusion, maple syrup and simple syrup, lemons and limes and maybe oranges, and a few fresh herbs like mint, sage, and thyme, and a few assorted bitters, a muddler, crushed and cubed ice.

The cherry bourbon would make amazing Old Fashioneds, and all you need for that is bitters and simple or maple syrup.

I made a similar apricot vodka. I do 1.5oz of it shaken with a spoon of apricot jam, .5oz lemon juice, splash simple syrup, and egg white, served in a chilled coupe with lemon zest. (This is also nice on the rocks topped with seltzer as a fizz.)

Other possible mixers: chilled green tea, ginger beer (as you say), complimentary flavored seltzers, and pumpkin pie soda, if you can find it, for the butternut vodka. Some sage-infused simple syrup would pair well with the butternut vodka and also with the blackberry gin. You could also go all-out for a variation on these butternut sage martinis.
posted by halation at 1:35 PM on September 25, 2018 [6 favorites]


Almost certainly simpler than you're looking for, but if I were tasting interesting infused liquors I'd like the option of just adding plain soda so that I could taste them clearly.
posted by asperity at 1:35 PM on September 25, 2018 [6 favorites]


Dry sodas are often good with flavored liquor. A dry pear soda might go well with the cherry-flavor liquors as pear/cherry is often a good flavor lash-up. A dry cucumber soda might be good with any of them but especially the apricot, plum and fig vodka as it can add a melon-like flavor. Dry lemon & cucumber soda together with the blackberry gin seems like it'd have a chance.
posted by bz at 1:37 PM on September 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


Agree that they sound like they would be great with just club soda, but if I was getting fancy, I would get a bunch of lacroix (or other) flavored sparkling waters to try mixing & matching with them
posted by wowenthusiast at 2:00 PM on September 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


The plain old gin and tonics we make with raspberry infused gin are spectacular- I bet they’d be great with your blackberry stuff. Fill a small glass with ice. Cut a lime into 8 wedges, squeeze two of them into the glass and drop them in. Add 2 oz of the infused gin and 4 oz of tonic. Stir. Tada!
posted by charmedimsure at 2:04 PM on September 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


Trader Joe's Lemon & Ginger Juice Seltzer has a strong, pleasant ginger flavor with zero sugar. I love ginger beer and this is my new favorite. There are also cranberry and orange seltzers and they are good, but the ginger one is the best!
posted by soelo at 2:14 PM on September 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


The pie vodka would be good with a milk/cream to make a sweet-not-really-a-martini like on girly restaurant menus. Depending on how strong various flavors and sweetness are, I'd mix a cocktail with that vodka, cream, pumpkin butter (or puree + sugar), and some kind of bitters (either plain aromatic, or some spiced flavor like cardamom/chai/orleans)
posted by aimedwander at 2:34 PM on September 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


ooohhh I wonder how that pie vodka would go with Oat Milk. Could either be delicious or very weird.
posted by wowenthusiast at 2:41 PM on September 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


The bourbon old fashioned with a splash of Cointreau or other orange liquor would work.
posted by mmascolino at 3:34 PM on September 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


- gin with blackberries in it. I usually mix this with strong ginger beer and lime juice, but there must be other options.

Shake that with lime juice, a dash of triple sec, a dash of cran,and an OZ. of simple syrup, that should give you a berry gin cosmo.

- bourbon with lapin cherries in it. This is so tasty by itself that I can't think of what to mix with it.

Old Fashioned for sure. Add a splash of OJ or blood orange anything.

- vodka with both sweet and sour cherries in it, some with the pits in.

Martini time! Chocolate cherry martini, Campari or Aperol martini, cherry vanilla martini- this vodka, stoli vanil, shake shake shake, martini glass, top with cola.

- vodka with dried apricots, plums and figs in it. It tastes a tiny bit like port because of the figs.

Hmmm. Tough one. Add red wine and fresh fruit and call it fig sangria.

- vodka with butternut squash, raw ginger, and cinnamon sticks in it, which basically tastes like pie.

Get your blender out and get a few flavors of ice cream- vanilla, pumpkin, coffee, green tea,tea, cinnamon, maybe rum raisin. Make frappes, but remember they are not for children.
posted by vrakatar at 5:12 PM on September 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


Blackberry gin: try this or any of their huckleberry variants. Switch out the lime juice for grapefruit?
posted by ahundredjarsofsky at 9:24 PM on September 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


I do a gin infused with dried raspberries that I really like in a Lucien Gaudin cocktail. I bet your gin with blackberries would work well there, too.
posted by maurice at 5:43 AM on September 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


Try mixing the blackberry gin with dry hard cider. I like to add a few drops of nettle tincture and tiny boba from a bubble tea shop (yes they will sell you a cup full of just boba of you ask!)

I would also experiment with adding the cherry ones to chocolate stout. I sometimes mix raspberry lambic that way, I think infused vodka should work too.

Pumpkin pie white russian?
posted by ananci at 12:04 PM on September 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Oh wow. First, will all of you please come over for a cocktail party? Second, we decided on making a bunch of interesting simple syrups and buying a bunch of different flavors of fizzy things and bitters and seeing what people come up with. Syrups so far: balsamic vinegar and rosemary (to go with the dried fruit vodka), tart apple and lemon (to go with the squash vodka and maybe also the blackberry gin), sage and lemon thyme (to go with almost any of them but especially the squash and blackberry and cherry), ginger and peppercorn (to go with most of them), and I'm going to make an orange one with a little bit of chili pepper in it to mix with the cherry bourbon. Oh, and also I threw a handful of cacao nibs into some of the cherry vodka and OH MY GOODNESS YOU SHOULD DO THIS.
posted by centrifugal at 6:59 PM on September 28, 2018 [1 favorite]


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