Rum Infusion: Ginger-Star Anise-Vanilla

2.21.10 Ginger-Star Anise-Vanilla RUM infusion

This infusion was commissioned by our friend Jen. She's not much of a vodka fan, and asked us to do a rum infusion for her. She wanted star anise, and then we suggested something to take the edge off of that flavor. She decided to go with Vanilla and Ginger. This is new and fun for us because it is uncharted territory and we have no recipe to go off of.

Cruzan Aged Rum (1L). very strong alcohol flavor. not a spicy rum.

E: "Tastes like rum"

L: that's not helpful.

E: it's neither sweet or bitter.

Neither L nor E cares for the flavor much.

We're guessing on the quantities and this will have to be monitored often for flavor balance. Also this is a 1 liter infusion, not our usual 750 mL.

Ginger took 18 days last time, Vanilla goes for forever, and we're guessing star anisie will be quick, maybe 5 days like black pepper was.

Trying to figure out strategy on this one. We're trying to scale correctly. We're going to do a 1/2 cup of ginger, 2 vanilla beans and we'll figure out the star anise later. We want to make sure Vanilla and Ginger are represented before adding the star anise, which we think will quickly over power the other flavors if we're not careful. In an effort to speed up the process we opted for more Ginger.

1L Cruzan Aged Rum

1 c sliced ginger

2 Tahitian grade A vanilla beans, sliced lengthwise

3.06.10 Balancing the ginger and vanilla

Filtered out the ginger. very gingery, the vanilla was there but it needed more time. L really liked how the vanilla smoothed out the sharpness of the ginger.

3.11.10 This is really good!

Vanilla flavor is coming along very nicely.

9pm. Added 1/3 cup star anise. We have no idea how long this will take, so we'll have to do frequent tastings to keep the flavor in balance.

3.12.10 Anise overkill. :(

8:30am. Woke up and saw that the color of the rum had changed quite a bit. L decided to give it a taste, and the star anise was definitely done, E tasted it. We both agreed that the anise is done and pretty much the only flavor component, so we filtered it immediately, but retained the vanilla beans We're going to give this one another taste later and figure out if we have to infuse more ginger to give it more balance.

Yes. We will have to add more ginger and continue to let the vanilla strengthen.

3.28.10 Under reconstruction

1 cup of sliced ginger was added to try to balance the flavors again. The vanilla beans are still in the vodka as well.