An experiment in flavoured vodka

A few years ago I saw a recipe for Lemon vodka in a food magazine and decided to try it out, it was very yummy but my friend and I managed to work our way through it in a scarily short amount of time just mixing it with orange juice.  I always slightly regretted that I hadn't been a bit more adventurous with it.

More recently I’ve had great fun experimenting with cocktail ingredients lists and finding the perfect blends for what I’m looking for in an after work tipple (or even a weekend tipple come to that!).  I’ve decided I’m now ready to move on to being a bit more experimental with the drinks I’m making.  I thought I’d better start somewhere fairly simple so after making a few batches of Skittles vodka as Christmas presents this year (I’d just moved house and was more than a little bit skint) I decided to experiment a bit for myself!

Below you will see evidence of such an experiment!

Having had pleasing results with normal skittles at Christmastime I still thought the ‘recipe’ could be improved upon.  I wanted to see if sour skittles might take the edge of that slightly sickly sweetness that went with the normal skittle vodka.  To make it a totally fair experiment I took all the purple and red/pink coloured skittles (my personal favourites) from two small cardboard packs of normal skittles and sour skittles.

Both my flatmate and I are fond of a cocktail or two but we aren’t really shot drinking types except under special circumstances but in order to be totally fair we tried both vodkas in both forms and here are the results.

For shot drinkers I would recommend the normal skittle vodka – the sweetness balances out pretty well with the vodka (although the vodka was still a bit much for me!).  The sour vodka was a bit like drinking apple sours (although obviously this one tasted like skittles) but had a much stronger taste of vodka – I think it you bothered to work it out the percentage here would be higher than a normal apple sours.  For people who just want a few shots at a party either one would suffice – if you’re looking for something to drink over ice you might need to get a bit more fancy.

While the skittle vodka was yummy as a shot it was not suitable for something to take the edge off a long day of work – too many shots and I might not make it in the next day.  We tried mixing the normal skittle vodka with lemonade or with lime and soda but both times it was a bit too sweet.  However this time the sour skittles vodka version was much better, it took the edge of the sweetness of the lemonade while still tasting of skittle-y goodness!

If you fancy running your own skittles vodka experiments you will need only a bottle of vodka (or a pretty bottle and some vodka to put in it) and a pack of skittles.  Depending on what colour you want your vodka to end up you may need to remove some skittles (if you put every colour in you may end up with brown vodka) – as I said I removed all but the red and purple and then ate the rest a cook’s perk.