Earl Grey Vodka

I've been meaning to go grocery shopping for the past few days. I wanted to grab a few things, and I had a craving for fajitas. We had some tomatoes and onions in the house that needed to be used up so it presented an excellent opportunity.

I was watching a live stream and a fellow viewer comes up with little "divinations" during the streams. The divination this time was "Today is a day of new opportunities. Try something you might not have thought to, or have previously written off!". Now while I had already planned to go to the grocery, I was thinking of going to a different store and maybe trying some new cooking techniques.

However, during the stream, "London Fog Cake" came up as a topic and I immediately was reminded of something that I've wanted to do for years. The cake recipe that they were reading out on stream had an "Earl Grey & Lavender" frosting.

I'm a fan of making cocktails and trying out any kind of drink. One of the things that I've been wanting to make is an Earl Grey-infused vodka. I've never had it before, maybe I've seen it once in a store or something, but I've never had the chance to taste it anything.

So I thought to myself, I could make that. When I was at the store, I picked up a box of Earl Grey. Nothing special, just what you see on the shelf. When I got back home I made stuff for fajitas and then realized that we were pretty much out of vodka.

I headed to the local liquor store, picked up a handle, and headed back home.

Now something about me is that I only drink water and alcoholic beverages. The last time I had a drink that wasn't water was in February 2020, so right about 5 years ago. It happened by accident, but then I just made it part of my life. The only time I'll have something like soda is with a mixed drink.

I don't think I've ever tasted Earl Grey by itself, and I figure if I'm going to make a flavored vodka with it, I might as well brew myself a cup.

The instructions say to boil some water and steep the tea bag for 2-4 minutes. I filled a mug up with water, poured it into a pot, set the pot to boil, and then poured the water back into the mug along with the tea bag.

After a couple of minutes, I removed the tea bag and then let the tea cool down.

I genuinely can't remember the last time I had a proper cup of tea. I think it might have been January 13th, 2020 as that's when I was at a French restaurant that specialized in tea.

I took a sip.

I don't know what I expected. It's tea, flavored water.

But then the sensations of what makes tea special began to hit me. The incredibly warm, almost 'too hot to hold' mug. The aroma is so intoxicating and welcoming. The flavor of the tea lingers on the palate. It's bitter almost. Earl Grey is unique in that it contains bergamot oil. Bergamot is a type of citrus fruit that to me, tastes almost like a lemon. Immediately as the tea hits your tongue, you can feel it spread across your palate and the citrusy notes give way to the tea's earthy ones. You still get a hint of the citrus that lingers, but the distinctive taste of black tea is what you're left with.

Armed with this new knowledge, I figured, I had come this far, I might as well go all in.

After looking up recipes, apparently, the suggested ratio for Earl Grey Vodka is for every 3oz of vodka, you use 1 tea bag. I had bought a 1.75L bottle of Vodka, and a box of 20 packets of tea. Turns out, 1.75L is roughly 61 fluid ounces. And seeing that I used up one tea bag in a proper cup, that left 19 tea bags.

Screw it, let's use them all.

The largest container I have for experiments like this is a jar that holds 1L. So that means this experiment is taking place in two batches. The first batch will have 10 packets, while the second batch will have the remaining 9.

I poured in about 900mL of vodka and then added the tea bags.

You're supposed to take them out after 2 hours or so, any longer and the vodka will go bitter. Unfortunately due to poor timing on my part, I left this sit for 3 hours, but that's totally fine. Roughly 5 hours is the upper limit for this kind of thing.

The color of the vodka was beautiful by the time I was done with it. I squeezed out the tea bags so that all of those flavors wouldn't be lost. I poured the Earl Grey Vodka into another container and then poured the unflavored vodka into the 1L container. Then I transferred the Earl Grey Vodka into the original bottle.

After a good night's rest, I took the remaining tea bags and set them up the same way once again.

It doesn't come across too well in photos, but you can see all of the tea-infused vodka sitting at the bottom of the container. A quick shake and it looked as it did the previous night.

This time I let the tea infuse over the course of 2.5 hours. I sampled the previous batch and the flavor was very apparent even from a small sip. 2 hours is probably what I'll aim for in the future.

Once again, I squeezed out the tea bags and then poured this batch into the original bottle.

And with that small amount of work, we now have a large bottle full of "Earl Grey Vodka".

Now the question is, what do I make with this?

I have a couple of ideas for cocktails. Because this has some notes of citrus, we can push that even further. Not too long ago I cut up a bunch of lemons and then poured honey all over it. Now I'm left with some lemon-flavored honey. I also took a pack of blueberries, cut them in half, and then left them in a container with some sugar. After a bit of waiting, I ended up with a blueberry syrup.

Both of those would make excellent drinks. But my mind also went to the original inspiration for this experiment, the cake. The flavor of lavender would pair wonderfully with the vodka, and I do have a bottle of Creme de Violette.

One of the cocktails that Creme de Violette is used in is the "Aviation", which features gin, maraschino liqueur, and lemon as well. I could swap out the gin for the vodka, and replace the lemon juice with my honey.

I asked around a bit more and I got a suggestion of making a "Mad Hatter". It Earl Grey Vodka (2 oz), Blackberry Jam (4 tsp), lemon juice (1 oz), simple syrup (3/4 oz), mineral water (to top), and mint for garnish.

This seemed almost perfect for me and my ingredients. So I got to work.

First up is my riff on the classic "Aviation".

I used 2 oz of the vodka, 1/2 oz of maraschino liqueur, 1/2 oz of Creme de Violette, and 1/2 oz of my lemon honey syrup. I should've cut back the maraschino liqueur to 1/4 oz or maybe omitted it entirely due to its sweetness and the lemon honey syrup. I also increased the ratio of the Creme de Violette and lowered the amount of lemon because the Creme de Violette is the star of the show in this drink, you want it to come through because the lemon will overpower it. What I didn't think about is how the vodka would just muddy the color. Oh well, live and learn.

For the Mad Hatter, I used 2 oz of the vodka, 4tsp of my blueberry syrup, and 1.5 oz of the lemon honey syrup. I knew this would be extremely sweet, so I dialed back the lemon honey syrup just a tad to get the ratios kinda right. I could probably refine this further, but I'm just having fun.

The end results looked wonderful, but I'm especially proud of how the "Mad Hatter" riff went.

On to the taste. The "Aviation" riff was good but needs refinement. You get the lemon note immediately as well as the lavender which gives way to the maraschino. The maraschino might be a tad overpowering so it might need to be omitted entirely next time. It's there for sweetness, which the honey provides. The base notes are very tea forward. The same notes that you get from drinking tea by itself, you get in the vodka.

The "Mad Hatter" riff is by far the winner. It's basically sugar and honey in this thing, so how could you complain. You get top notes of blueberry this time, which then gives way to the lemon and then the honey before finally finishing off with the notes of tea. I wish I had some mint for this thing, but unfortunately, it's mid-February.

For both drinks, there's plenty of room for improvement, but there's no way to learn unless you try. I'll be messing around more with this in the future, and it was such a success that I'll probably make more tea-infused drinks. Maybe gin next.

As always, I will leave you with a few words.

Be A Real Person