Vodka Infused With Black Tea

Tea cocktails have gained popularity, which is no surprise since tea itself is a ubiquitous beverage all over the world. There is really something special about sipping a properly prepared tea and spirits with infused tea are an innovative way of bringing the comforting tea experience into adult drinks. Tea cocktails can really sweep erstwhile coffee-lovers and other newbies to the tea world off their feet. Our easy recipe for how to infuse vodka with black tea makes a wonderful beverage that you can drink on its own or incorporate into other cocktails. Just three ingredients and a few hours are all that you need to sip a glass of this delicious preparation. Drink it straight, mix it with simple syrup, or use it for more complex cocktails.

Infusing is a common culinary technique in which solids add flavor to liquids by simply sitting in them for a set period of time. The steeping allows the solids to ooze out their flavor and aroma so the liquids absorb them. These infusions take many forms, like when you add garlic and herbs to olive oil, lavender to simple syrup, or even pineapple and cucumber chunks into mineral water. In some cases, the infused liquids are then strained and the solids discarded, but others keep part of the solids as part of their appeal or presentation. For our recipe, the tea leaves will be strained in their totality to have a clear drink.

When buying tea leaves, you have the choice of getting flavored or unflavored leaves; vodkas infused with unflavored tea leaves usually have a cleaner, more mixable flavor. Look for leaves that are big, but mainly allow your nose to do the shopping for you, as a strong smell is the best indicator of good flavor. If the leaves are too light to the touch it might be because they were overly dried, and thus will be lacking in flavor. There are many types of black tea leaves that you can find, and they all have a different character: citrusy Ceylon, richly malty and chocolatey Assam, muscatel-flavored Darjeeling, or breakfast or Earl Gray teas, which are made out of different combinations of these teas plus other varieties. It's up to you and your taste to choose the black tea leaves you use to infuse your vodka, so the easiest way of choosing is to go with the tea you'd normally drink on its own. For this recipe, you need a funnel, and a larger-than 750-milliliter glass bottle with a cap if you are adding simple syrup to the vodka.