Infusing Alcohol

There’s not really an all-encompassing recipe or technique for how to infuse an alcohol as it really depends on the ingredient you’re infusing and the strength of its flavour. Infusing is really about understanding that flavour and then learning to work with it. Some herbs, say dill, will have quite a potent flavour when really fresh or just picked, but sometimes they will have very little. Where possible it’s about tasting your ingredient and seeing how much taste you get in your mouth and then working out the infusing process from there. The best way is to try a couple of the more basic recipes in this book and then experiment once you get more confident. As a very rough guide, when infusing a herb I would use between 10 and 15 per cent of the weight of the spirit; with spices this would drop to 5 per cent.