Chocolate flavored vodka?
 

Hi there,

I am trying to find a recipe for chocolate flavored vodka, white chocolate
flavored vodka, cherry vodka etc..

Obviosuly I could just melt the chocolate into the vodka but anyone knows
how long this will last ... what is a BEST DRINK BEFORE DATE??

Does the vodka preserve the Chocolate, cherry etc??

Ian

Chocolate flavored vodka?
 

Ian wrote:

> I am trying to find a recipe for chocolate flavored vodka, white chocolate
> flavored vodka, cherry vodka etc..
>
> Obviosuly I could just melt the chocolate into the vodka but anyone knows
> how long this will last ... what is a BEST DRINK BEFORE DATE??
>
> Does the vodka preserve the Chocolate, cherry etc??

Use extracts and flavorings rather than trying to use real chocolate.
It's a waste of good chocolate. Note that whote chocolate is nothing
but cocoa butter, and bears almost no relationship to real chocolate.
I'm not sure how you'd recreate that taste.

But go to a store that has baking supplies, get some chocolate extract
or flavoring, and stir it into your vodka until you like the flavor.
Probably two tablespoons will be more than enough for a liter of vodka.
Sweeten to taste. Don't use really cheap, nasty vodka - you'll taste
the difference.

I find that liqueurs I make last from 1 to 3 years before they go stale.
Alcohol is, as you suggest, a great preservative, and your liqueurs
won't rot or go poisonous. But they'll just start to taste nasty as
oxygen eats them from the inside. While the vodka would probably
preserve the cherries, you really do want to remove them after a couple
of months - after your primary steeping period, basically. But if you
can find cherry flavoring, you're probably better off than trying to
work with real cherries. Unless you have a reason to need to use real
cherries.

Gunther Anderson

Chocolate flavored vodka?
 

Ian wrote:

> I am trying to find a recipe for chocolate flavored vodka, white chocolate
> flavored vodka, cherry vodka etc..
>
> Obviosuly I could just melt the chocolate into the vodka but anyone knows
> how long this will last ... what is a BEST DRINK BEFORE DATE??
>
> Does the vodka preserve the Chocolate, cherry etc??

Use extracts and flavorings rather than trying to use real chocolate.
It's a waste of good chocolate. Note that whote chocolate is nothing
but cocoa butter, and bears almost no relationship to real chocolate.
I'm not sure how you'd recreate that taste.

But go to a store that has baking supplies, get some chocolate extract
or flavoring, and stir it into your vodka until you like the flavor.
Probably two tablespoons will be more than enough for a liter of vodka.
Sweeten to taste. Don't use really cheap, nasty vodka - you'll taste
the difference.

I find that liqueurs I make last from 1 to 3 years before they go stale.
Alcohol is, as you suggest, a great preservative, and your liqueurs
won't rot or go poisonous. But they'll just start to taste nasty as
oxygen eats them from the inside. While the vodka would probably
preserve the cherries, you really do want to remove them after a couple
of months - after your primary steeping period, basically. But if you
can find cherry flavoring, you're probably better off than trying to
work with real cherries. Unless you have a reason to need to use real
cherries.

Gunther Anderson

Chocolate flavored vodka?
 

Gunther Anderson > wrote in
:

> While the vodka would probably preserve the cherries, you really do want
to remove them after a couple of months - after your primary steeping
period, basically.

Before doing this, you might want to check out the food preservation
newsgroup (sorry, can't think of the exact name). The question of using
herbs and fruits to flavor olive oil and vinegar has been discussed many
times. Since vinegar is nothing more than overly fermented alcohol, they
can probably give you some tips or point you to some good sources of
information. There are some risks to flavoring liquids with fresh
fruit/herbs.

Chocolate flavored vodka?
 

orwell wrote:

> Before doing this, you might want to check out the food preservation
> newsgroup (sorry, can't think of the exact name). The question of using
> herbs and fruits to flavor olive oil and vinegar has been discussed many
> times. Since vinegar is nothing more than overly fermented alcohol, they
> can probably give you some tips or point you to some good sources of
> information. There are some risks to flavoring liquids with fresh
> fruit/herbs.

Actually, vinegar is a competing bacterial by-product totally different
from alcohol. When you're making wine, you introduce a yeast in hopes
that it wins the microorganism wars, successfully colonizes the
solution, and starts converting sugars into alcohol. However, there's
plenty of wild acetobacter in the air, and it's always a risk that the
acetobacter will win and turn your grape juice into acetic acid (vinegar).

You can even turn wine into vinegar, since few wines are fermented to
completion (where there's no sugar left). There's almost always
something for the bacteria to eat. And heck, for all I know,
acetobacter might even be able to eat low concentrations of alcohol (my
expertise is alcohol rather than vinegars, so I'm really just making
that last part up).

Alcohol in high concentrations (anything above 20%) is a great
disinfectant, though, and will kill yeasts and other bacteria instantly.
This is why strong liquor doesn't spoil, it just goes stale. It
doesn't get colonized by deadly organisms, it just dies from oxygen
exposure.

So alcohol is a fine preservative as far as it goes. When you put
things in alcohol, though, there's always the danger of those areas that
don't come in contact with the alcohol to spoil on their own. Egg-based
liqueurs, at least those made at home, have a shelf life measured in
weeks because the eggs never completely mix in. There are always
strands of albumen that can spoil despite the vodka only a millimeter away.

Making liqueurs from fruits is an old and well-tested hobby, so I doubt
there are any significant hazards involved with it. Certainly, in the
years I've done it, the worst things that have happened to me have been
liqueurs that just don't taste good, and the occasional one that turns
to jelly. Gotta love high-pectin fruits.

Oh, and the danger of the fruits themselves oxidizing in the liqueur,
which is why you want to pull them out as soon as your flavor
concentration is high enough. A touch of brown on a peach liqueur can
add character, but too much brown will kill any liqueur.

Anyway, my site on making liqueurs, such as it is, is he

http://www.guntheranderson.com/liqueurs.htm

Gunther Anderson

Chocolate flavored vodka?
 

orwell wrote:

> Before doing this, you might want to check out the food preservation
> newsgroup (sorry, can't think of the exact name). The question of using
> herbs and fruits to flavor olive oil and vinegar has been discussed many
> times. Since vinegar is nothing more than overly fermented alcohol, they
> can probably give you some tips or point you to some good sources of
> information. There are some risks to flavoring liquids with fresh
> fruit/herbs.

Actually, vinegar is a competing bacterial by-product totally different
from alcohol. When you're making wine, you introduce a yeast in hopes
that it wins the microorganism wars, successfully colonizes the
solution, and starts converting sugars into alcohol. However, there's
plenty of wild acetobacter in the air, and it's always a risk that the
acetobacter will win and turn your grape juice into acetic acid (vinegar).

You can even turn wine into vinegar, since few wines are fermented to
completion (where there's no sugar left). There's almost always
something for the bacteria to eat. And heck, for all I know,
acetobacter might even be able to eat low concentrations of alcohol (my
expertise is alcohol rather than vinegars, so I'm really just making
that last part up).

Alcohol in high concentrations (anything above 20%) is a great
disinfectant, though, and will kill yeasts and other bacteria instantly.
This is why strong liquor doesn't spoil, it just goes stale. It
doesn't get colonized by deadly organisms, it just dies from oxygen
exposure.

So alcohol is a fine preservative as far as it goes. When you put
things in alcohol, though, there's always the danger of those areas that
don't come in contact with the alcohol to spoil on their own. Egg-based
liqueurs, at least those made at home, have a shelf life measured in
weeks because the eggs never completely mix in. There are always
strands of albumen that can spoil despite the vodka only a millimeter away.

Making liqueurs from fruits is an old and well-tested hobby, so I doubt
there are any significant hazards involved with it. Certainly, in the
years I've done it, the worst things that have happened to me have been
liqueurs that just don't taste good, and the occasional one that turns
to jelly. Gotta love high-pectin fruits.

Oh, and the danger of the fruits themselves oxidizing in the liqueur,
which is why you want to pull them out as soon as your flavor
concentration is high enough. A touch of brown on a peach liqueur can
add character, but too much brown will kill any liqueur.

Anyway, my site on making liqueurs, such as it is, is he

http://www.guntheranderson.com/liqueurs.htm

Gunther Anderson