11.22.09 Coconut, by popular request
Emilio split the coconut open with a hammer and a chisel...it was moldy. boo. Try again later this week.11.28.09 Getting the Axe
The night before E poked through the coconut shell and drained the coconut water. He started by trying to chisel it open, but eventually brought out a small axe.
After successfully cracking the shell, the meat had to be pried from the shell.
Then we had to cut off the bit of shell that had stuck to the meat. We decided to expose as much surface area of the coconut as possible, so opted to grate the coconut, but after 2 small pieces of coconut, L realized that this would take forever. She decided that dicing was the way to go.
After chopping several more pieces to the consistency of coarsely grated coconut, E took over. This was going to take for-ev-er. It was only then that he realized (thank goodness!) that he has a food processor. That speeded up the process quite nicely, and E was very happy about that.
From the one coconut, we ended up with 2.5c grated coconut.
We were going to do a 1/2 size of this, but after all the work it took to make it, we decided we didn't want to do this again anytime soon and we chose to do a full size. We didn't have an infusion jar large enough to hold the whole coconut and the 750 ml vodka, so we decided to use a large 1.75L empty bottle of Fris. Getting the coconut into this jar was also a challenge, after attempting to get it into the bottle via a homemade tin foil funnel, we went for the old approach of using E's hands as the funnel while L dumped the coconut in.
After successfully cracking the shell, the meat had to be pried from the shell.
Then we had to cut off the bit of shell that had stuck to the meat. We decided to expose as much surface area of the coconut as possible, so opted to grate the coconut, but after 2 small pieces of coconut, L realized that this would take forever. She decided that dicing was the way to go.
After chopping several more pieces to the consistency of coarsely grated coconut, E took over. This was going to take for-ev-er. It was only then that he realized (thank goodness!) that he has a food processor. That speeded up the process quite nicely, and E was very happy about that.
From the one coconut, we ended up with 2.5c grated coconut.
We were going to do a 1/2 size of this, but after all the work it took to make it, we decided we didn't want to do this again anytime soon and we chose to do a full size. We didn't have an infusion jar large enough to hold the whole coconut and the 750 ml vodka, so we decided to use a large 1.75L empty bottle of Fris. Getting the coconut into this jar was also a challenge, after attempting to get it into the bottle via a homemade tin foil funnel, we went for the old approach of using E's hands as the funnel while L dumped the coconut in.
Here's what we ended up with: 750 ml Fris, 2.5 c grated coconut and 1 tsp sugar.
12.31.09 Taste Test
We've tasted this along the way. The coconut has absorbed a lot of the vodka, and filtering won't be sufficient, we will also have to press it to extract the absorbed vodka. L: it is starting to _finally_ taste like coconut, but it has a long way to go. E: it has a long way to go, but it's finally starting to taste like coconut, and it has some nice crunchy bits too.
3.13.10 Not really done, but we're sick of it.
We finally got around to filtering the coconut vodka. We first ran the vodka through a wire strainer to get out the large chunks of coconut. The coconut seemed to have absorbed some of the vodka, so we wanted to press it. We tried a french press, but that didn't work at all. So then E came up with the bright idea to put the coconut in a colander and use a bowl to press on it. That method worked pretty well and we were able to get some of the vodka out. We had started with 750 ml, and in the end we had 700ml, which is not bad at all given that we'd tasted it multiple times during the infusion process. We ran it through the gold coffee filter and declared it done.
Our thoughts on this infusion: It would not be something E would want to do again. There is not enough coconut flavor to make it worth it. He said, "I'd rather buy a coconut rum." It still has a medium vodka burn and moderate coconut taste. It's not as strongly flavored as we'd like our infusions to be. The burn decreases when its on the rocks.
Our thoughts on this infusion: It would not be something E would want to do again. There is not enough coconut flavor to make it worth it. He said, "I'd rather buy a coconut rum." It still has a medium vodka burn and moderate coconut taste. It's not as strongly flavored as we'd like our infusions to be. The burn decreases when its on the rocks.
Recipe
750 ml vodka
2.5 cups grated coconut
1 tsp sugar
Infusion time: 3 months.
Infusion time: 3 months.
The vodka needs at least another round of infusion to really make the coconut flavor strong.
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