Ginger-Infused Vodka

[Pumpkin Lover]

About a week-and-a-half ago, I prepared some vodka for ginger-flavored cocktails: I sliced about an inch of ginger and chucked it into a plastic container with the vodka to macerate. I still have some of the vodka left and would love to get into it, but I'm wondering if it's safe to drink. Should I worry about any bacteria growing on the ginger, or is the alcohol strong enough to keep botulism buggers from growing?

I'm a journalism school graduate, I know nothing about food science. Please let me know if this post belongs here or in General Food Topics/Cooking...

[slkinsey]

If it's just ginger in vodka, you should be fine from a food safety standpoint given the relatively small amount of ginger you used. Unfortunately, you may find that it doesn't have the "zing" it had when it was fresh. Zingerone seems to be relatively volatile and doesn't stay around too long.

[lperry]

Ginger flavored cocktails? Yum! What did you make?

[Pumpkin Lover]

lperry, I kind of made it up as I went along. I had been re-reading little ms. foodie's Foodblog (one of my faves), as well as a recent post on the Gothamist blog. I liked the idea of making a ginger simple syrup for cocktails and plain ginger ale, and I wanted to use vodka instead of gin for the concoctions--I was originally making these cocktails for a party, and my friends don't like gin.

So I made the ginger simple syrup from the Gothamist blog (it makes a LOT of syrup, and you get this great candied ginger after cooking it down--looks so nice topped on the cocktails!), and I chucked plain ginger slices in 2 cups of vodka, a la little ms. foodie. To make the cocktails, I just put some ice cubes in glasses (my friend Katherine was moving out of her apartment, so we were drinking out of old salsa jars, ghetto-style ), put about 2 1/2 teaspoons of syrup in each glass, threw some vodka in, and topped it with seltzer. What's so nice about this drink is that you can sweeten it accordingly. I love simple syrup, it's so versatile!

And slkinsey, you're right about the zing factor. The vodka was much more snappy two weeks ago. Now, there's a mellow, rounder ginger flavor, which is also nice, but I miss the original spiciness. I'm drinking the vodka right now, so if I don't post again here, let's assume that food science got the better of me.

[Dave the Cook]

Yeah, we lose a lot of members this way.

[lperry]

Thanks for the ideas. I've got a jar of ginger syrup in the fridge from when I made crystallized ginger a while back. I've also got a bottle of vodka somewhere around here....