After getting home from work tonight, I took out one of the mason jars, the one with the fruit that is supposed to have the strongest flavor and therefore infuse the fastest — the tangerines. I strained out the excess pulp and got the vodka into a new mason jar. The color was a pale, transparent orange, enough to hint at the flavor.
Of course, the real test is the taste, which was not so intense as I’d like. Maybe it needed longer than a week. The Wife thought they were a little bitter. So next time I’ll pulp and zest the tangerines and discard the rinds. It makes me a little apprehensive about the cucumber, since the primary infusion there were peelings, and those are the bitterest part of that fruit. (Fruit? Vegetable? I’ve always thought the meat of cucumbers was a little bit sweet, and sweetness is something you associate with fruit.) But the berry and cucumber vodka need a while longer according to the infusion guides.
Still, the results are visually quite appealing and I like the touch of bitterness in the resulting martini.
The point of soaking the fruit in the alcohol is for the oils of the fruit to be leached out by the alcohol. The oils are in the rind. Discard or eat the fruit, soak the rind. When the rind is white and brittle, the oils have been removed. Some sugar may be necessary to bring out the flavor as the oils may be slightly bitter.
In our day we would have been out in the garage stomping on our grapes for our 'zins".