Food - Drink
The Fruit Mistake You May Be Making When Infusing Bourbon
By MEGGAN ROBINSON
It’s fun to order fancy cocktails at bars, which often carry specially-flavored liquors, but it can be even more fun, not to mention more cost-effective, to infuse your own spirits at home. Adding fresh fruit to a solid bottle of bourbon is a great place to start, but comes with a few pitfalls to watch out for, including over-extraction.
Over-extraction is a result of leaving flavorings to sit in alcohol for too long, and over-extracted fruit creates bitter bourbon. Alcohol is very effective at pulling flavors out of other ingredients, and this efficiency can turn on you fast, especially if you crush or finely dice your fruit, increasing its surface area and speeding up extraction even more.
Whisky Advocate recommends cutting fruit into pieces that are about the size of your thumb to help prevent over-extraction. If you’re unsure about how long you should soak your fruit in the bourbon, Serious Eats suggests tasting the liquor as it sits, so you can remove the fruit the second the alcohol is to your liking.