After a discussion about using ultrasonic cleaners to infuse flavour into alcohol I ended up buying a cheap one for Amazon to mess around with it. The cleaner cost around £20, so if it didn’t work I wouldn’t have lost too much money.
For my first experiment I did an orange infused rum. I requested that the wife get the cheapest clear spirit she could find in Aldi (as she was heading there anyway). So armed with just shy of a litre of “Hopkins” rum and some orange peel I made orange infused rum.
It was amazing. I followed this up with banana rum (too bananaery) and Marmite rum (that was strange).
To demonstrate the technique, here’s me making some ginger infused rum.
Equipment
In the below photo is the basic equipment:
- A cheap ultrasonic cleaner.
- About a quadruple measure of rum free poured into an old, clean honey jar.
- Some homemade preserved ginger in ginger syrup. This was made when I had an excess of ginger, it is quite firey and sweet with a nice kick of flavour.
Step one
Take a few chunks of ginger and dump them in the rum, this was guestimated by eye. Try not to eat too many of the ginger chunks from the original jar.
Step two
Place the jar in the ultrasonic cleaner and pour water around the jar until it reaches the max level. Set the timer for 380 seconds (this model only allows the timer to be 180, 280, 380 or 480). Press start.
I leave the lid of the jar open, this probably makes no real difference.
Step three
The observant amongst you may have noticed the half lemon behind the ultrasonic cleaner. I did too and thought “sod it”: lemon and ginger go well together. So I peeled it, squeezed it into the jar and then through everything in with the rum.
Step four
Set it off for another 380 seconds; when finished drain the liquids off into another jar. I ended up eating the, now rum infused ginger bits. I guess I won’t be driving for at least four hours.
The resulting rum is quite lemony with some of the fireyness of the ginger.
I found from experimentation that if you leave the infusion to age for at least a week then the flavours intensify. So shake, and let it finish mingling.
