Another month, another candy to infuse with my liquor.

Once you’ve mixed as many cocktails as I have, you start to get over the regular way of making drinks, and want to find new ways to create something delicious. Hence me trying out the Skittles thing last month. And while the Skittles vodka tasted like, well, Skittles, the resulting beverage was way too thick for me to really enjoy it without feeling like I was sipping on liquid diabetes. Two different friends independently suggested I try Jolly Ranchers next, so I gave that a shot with both rum and vodka (not at the same time).

The process is so simple, it barely merits it’s own outline, but here’s one anyway; I’ll describe the process with vodka, but it’s the same for with rum:

• Step One: Get some Vodka. As with the Skittles infusion, going cheap is okay, but not that much cheaper than, say, Absolut. If you really want a cheap vodka that is pretty good quality, I recommend Svedka.
• Step Two: Get some Jolly Ranchers. I went to the supermarket and got one of those big-ass bags of Jolly Ranchers; there were over 20 candies of each flavor in the package, which is just about the right number for my purposes.
• Step Three: Separate the flavors, and add to the Vodka.  From a 750ml bottle of Vodka, I made two batches; that is, I poured out half the bottle into an empty bottle, and put a different colored batch of candies into each bottle. In the picture above, you can see that I chose Sour Apple and Grape.
• Step Four: Just set it and forget it. Yes, just like the Ronco chicken cooker thing, you can just leave this one be. You can speed the process up if you shake it, but leaving it overnight should be cool.
• Step Five: Chill, pour and enjoy. This is a lot easier than the Skittles vodka, insofar as you don’t have to do anything to it once the infusion has taken place. No messy straining necessary.

I also tried this out with rum, as I stated before; for the rum, I used Wray and Nephew’s white overproof rum from Jamaica. I didn’t really like the mixture as much; because it’s much stronger than normal rum, it overpowered the candy’s flavor. It might work with other light rums, but I’m biased towards Wray and Nephew, so I won’t bother with those. If any of you try it out with, say, Bacardi or anything like that, let me know how it turns out. I think rum would work well with candy, because it’s made from sugar cane, so it could complement the flavor nicely.

The vodka mixture I liked; in fact, I liked it better than the Skittles vodka. I still have plenty of Jolly Ranchers left, too, so I may be making these for friends in the upcoming weeks. Lots of birthdays coming up! I’ll be playing with these infusions a lot in the near future, so you’ll be seeing a few more of these soon!