Infused vodka, come talk to me about glass bottles and pretty shit.

[BrianCoxIsUpTheDuff]

pretty shit: organza, bows, stuff to make it pretty and present like.

I have 4 females to buy presents for and a low-ish budget. Had a brain wave that I would buy some nice vodka, some Skittles (or other sweets), bottles with stoppers and make my own sweet-infused-vodka.

Looking online for bottles is a nightmare, either qty 1 or qty 10+ and also delivery costs (I won't ever use the spare bottles, they will just sit and gather dust).

Does anybody know of a decent shop where I can get individual bottles from? I'm in Cheshire.

and, has anybody done this - do you have a recipe/was it a hit with the recipient?

Thanks

Hello, hello, hello!

I have made LOTS of flavoured vodka.

Lemon sherbert, parma violet, werthers original, rhubarb and custard, chocolate lime (that was a bit of a mental one) xmas pudding flavour (that was rum though) and I've currently got some bramble and some plum vodka steeping away. PHROAR! And I'm just waiting for my quince to ripen and I'm going to have a bash at some quince brandy this year.

I bought bottles in a batch of 10. They were only 250ml so you'd be surprised how quickly you get through them! (one batch of vodka is usally a litre or 750cl, so that's 3/4 bottles done before you've even started!

To decorate them I just used little snippets of wrapping ribbon I had lying around - hang on I'll get you a picture. look

Here is where I got my bottles from, and my family have GIVEN THEM BACK TO ME for me to refill this year! hahh!

Try here. I've not ordered from them yet, but they have a fab selection. I agree with Shirleyrots that it's surprising how many bottles you get through if using smallish ones.

If you're doing Skittles, split the colours or you'll end up with sludgy brown.

Ikea do some but they are quite big - more practical than pretty.

OH GOD ZEEKY!

That site is fabulous. I love those xmas tree shaped ones! They'd be fab with green skittle voddy.

You can get individual ones here with free P and P if you only want a few :-)

They have got some amazing bottles haven't they??? I just HAVE to get some Christmas tree shaped ones and star shaped ones!

The Christmas tree and star shaped bottles would be good to have on the Christmas table, wouldn't they? Just pour cheapo wine into them and the drinkers wouldn't know what it was! Goody!

Alternatively buy the mini wine bottles on 2 for £3 in Tesco (choose the ones without writing on the screwtops), drink the wine, soak off the label, wash and fill. I use nice vinegar bottles (I don't drink the vinegar funnily enough, I make chutney with it).

ooo, thank you all so much!

Christmas tree bottles - squeeeeee!!! (I never 'squeeee')

Shirley I love how simple your bottles are, and so many ideas for different flavours, thank you.

Noted about separating the colours - thanks!

My friend loves 'Pinky' vodka, but it is tres expensive, she says it tastes like parma violets - that's her sorted then

Thank you all for the links, I have no idea where these sites were when I was trawling through earlier probably didn't look very hard

One last question - would it be a good idea to start know-ish, or should I leave it another month? Thinking of flavours/infusing etc, usually longer is better - is that the case here?

now-ish

Just a note about skittles vodka. I've just made some & it's taken a lot more skittles than I anticipated. I worked on a recipe I found with 180 skittles per 70cl vodka but I've definitely needed to put more in as it didn't taste too good. Have heard black jack & fruit salad vodkas are supposed to be good

It depends really what you're planning to make.

You can make sweetie vodka in the dishwasher - it literally just takes as long as a cycle! Anything more 'natural' takes a while.

If you don't have a dishwasher then just agitating the sweets, and making sure the flavour is ok, took me a varying length of time. Parma violet was very quick, werther's original took a while and needed LOADS more sweets than I originally thought.

You might as well start know TBH, it can't hurt!

anything with fruit in you ought to get on and do now-ish

I agree skittles type can be dishwashered and drunk pretty much straightaway

my Top Tip wrt bottles - make sure you get swing tops or screw tops not corks/bungs; the corks can take on a weirdy fowsty odour, a bit off putting and bungs and corks can come adrift in transit which is a bit grrr-making if you taking pressies a way, or for recipients transporting home not in their tummies, arf

Do you sterilise the bottles before?how do you do it?

I used to sterilise them, but considering your bunging alcohol in it seemed kind of pointless.

If you want to sterilise glass bottles you can either stick them through a hot cycle of the dishwasher, or put them in the oven for a while (god can't remember how long for, sorry)

How do you do skittle vodka in the dishwasher? Just bung a load of the same colour ones in the bottle with the vodka and do a normal wash?

yep Viva, strain out the clag after (v nice on ice cream)

I usually don't screw top on all the way, to allow for a bit of expansion

I sterilise by sticking bottle through cycle first

I'd be fretting about the water getting in and wasting the vodka.

Could I do rhubarb and custard vodka in the dishwasher.

Would the Roma bottles from amazon with the swing top thingys be ok in the dishwasher?

roma bottles are PERFICK

rhubarb and custard, hmm prob might need two cycles praps over two days? the dishwashering merely speeds up dissolving, you can make without d/w-ing, just takes longer

Excellent will give it a go. Will I need special anti clag paper or will a sieve and a funnel do?

I use single muslin, double sucks up too much alchol as does coffee papers!

a fine-ish sieve will do just as well; not colander though, rofl

Thanks, I've got a fine sieve.