Not only can you taste the rainbow, you can get drunk on it too.
(WARNING: Image-heavy. Also, I apologize for the shitty formatting, but I am exhausted and about to pass out on the keyboard, so I'm doing this real fast. I'll make it prettier in the morning.)
Tonight my brother and his girlfriend came over and we made Skittle vodka. It was awesome. We used this tutorial, and here is how it went...
The required components:
A lot of vodka.
Two large packages of skittles. (We bought two varieties so we could pick the best flavours and do a more complete rainbow.)
Two containers, a funnel, and a coffee filter.
Some cute bottles for final presentation. Or not, if you don't care, but these were for a gift, so we did.
Also a bunch of empty plastic bottles (like from bottled water or juice), but I didn't think you needed a photo of those.
First we separated out the Skittles by colour, glanced over the flavours, and decided we would do red (cherry), orange (orange), yellow (lemon), green (lime), blue (raspberry), and purple (grape). We filled each decorative bottle to the top with vodka, then dumped that into a plastic bottle. The idea was to only use as much vodka as would fit into the final bottles, so that we wouldn't waste a bunch. (It was expensive vodka.)
Turns out we had just enough vodka. There was just enough left to fill half of another bottle, so we did that, and decided we'd make it pink (strawberry). It wouldn't go into the final gift, being only a half-bottle, but it would be amusing to us anyway.
Next, we counted out 30 of each colour of Skittle and dumped those into their separate bottles. Then we decided that didn't seem like enough and added 10 more. Then we still felt like adding more, so we added another 10, for a total of 50 Skittles per bottle. (I should point out here that this is about twice the amount used in the tutorial, and the tutorial was using about twice the vodka we did, making it serious overkill on our part. But hey, we were having fun and didn't care. It produced a very strong flavour in the final product, but we liked that and decided it had been a good idea.)
The next step is to wait. Occasionally you shake the plastic bottles and check to see what's happening in them. In about two hours, the vodka will completely strip the Skittles of their outer layer of colour, along with a bunch of the sugar from the inner candy. You'll know it's done when the Skittles themselves have been reduced to half size and the liquid has a layer of sort of foamy "head" along the top of it. If you're doing larger quantities when we did (our colour batches were each very small, as you can see), it'll probably take longer than two hours; I'd be tempted to leave the bottles out overnight, in fact.
Pretty rainbow!
The leftover pink quantity.
Next you have to filter the contents of each bottle to get rid of particulates and foamy residue "head". Originally we used paper coffee filters, as per the tutorial instructions, but that sucked. We lost a ton of liquid as it got soaked up by the filter, and it took a good half hour to go through it. FAIL.
I insisted we use the pink as a test run. Nobody thought I was being overly cautous AFTER something went wrong!
I remembered having seen a reusable coffee filter in the grocery store when I was buying the paper ones -- it was synthetic and thus wouldn't absorb half our product -- so my brother ran out to go buy one while Sarah and I waited. Luckily the grocery store is right next door, so it didn't take long.
In the meantime, Sarah and I noticed Eve was acting weird. She was doing some sort of wacky snakey contortionist yoga. I seriously have no idea what was going on there. I've seen her exploring and undulating around, obviously, but never contorting herself into a corner and just sitting there for half an hour. Especially not fully exposed when there are a bunch of people moving around right near her and all the lights in the room are on. It was very strange.
Eventually she wandered off back into her log hide, and my brother returned. Moving on.
We started with green. The reusable synthetic filter worked MUCH faster, but still left a lot of foamy particulate residue/"head". We thought it wouldn't be a big deal, but once we got it into the decorative bottle, it was REALLY obvious, so we decided we would have to filter each colour several times. Sure enough, subsequent bottles turned out much better, so we figured at the end we'd go back and refilter the green until it was just as nice too. (Again, if you're doing larger quantities, you could probably still use a paper filter, and it would likely catch all the particulate residue the first time through. It's just that because we were doing such small batches, we couldn't afford to lose even the small amount of liquid the filters absorb.)
Okay, so. For each colour, you dump the plastic bottle full of Skittles and vodka juice into your filter, above a container to catch what comes out. You swish the Skittles around to separate liquid from goop, then dump the Skittles in the garbage (ours tasted more like vodka than Skittles now, and were not delicious anymore), rinse out the filter, and run the liquid through it again.
And again... And again... And again.
Both the filter and the containers got a quick rinse between each filtering to wash away residue, so that we weren't just transfering it back and forth without getting rid of it.
After six filterings, we'd gotten rid of about as much foamy residue as we were going to with that method, so we stopped. Any remainder was carefully skimmed off with a spoon.
Finally it could be poured into the decorative bottle! ...At which point we discovered that the Skittles had added not just colour and flavour, but also volume, to the vodka. We now had slightly more than each decorative bottle could hold, so we filled them as far as we could and dumped the rest into some ramekins until we could decide what to do with it. Eventually my brother decided somebody should taste test our creations, and since he was the one driving (on a learner's license, no less, which means zero tolerance for ANY blood alcohol) and I'm allergic, it fell to Sarah -- the tiny lightweight -- to knock back the ramekins as shots.
We repeated this process with all of the colours...
And then there was some swing dancing...
I don't know why Matt looks like such a zombie here. He was actually being a big goofball and the dancing was all his idea.
They're actually better at it than they let on.
Honest. I swear.
And making Sarah drink ALL the rest of the extra...
Et voila! Skittle vodka! Now in six seven awesome colours and knock-your-socks-off sugary flavours!
I kind of want to keep them just because they're pretty, and they fill my kitchen with rainbow fun. But they're somebody's Christmas present, so I can't. Alas! They do taste good, though. Even I like them. I wouldn't want to drink a lot, but I don't actually like alcohol, so I'm a terrible guinea pig. I can see how it would go over really well at parties, though...
Tonight my brother and his girlfriend came over and we made Skittle vodka. It was awesome. We used this tutorial, and here is how it went...
The required components:
A lot of vodka.
Two large packages of skittles. (We bought two varieties so we could pick the best flavours and do a more complete rainbow.)
Two containers, a funnel, and a coffee filter.
Some cute bottles for final presentation. Or not, if you don't care, but these were for a gift, so we did.
Also a bunch of empty plastic bottles (like from bottled water or juice), but I didn't think you needed a photo of those.
First we separated out the Skittles by colour, glanced over the flavours, and decided we would do red (cherry), orange (orange), yellow (lemon), green (lime), blue (raspberry), and purple (grape). We filled each decorative bottle to the top with vodka, then dumped that into a plastic bottle. The idea was to only use as much vodka as would fit into the final bottles, so that we wouldn't waste a bunch. (It was expensive vodka.)
Turns out we had just enough vodka. There was just enough left to fill half of another bottle, so we did that, and decided we'd make it pink (strawberry). It wouldn't go into the final gift, being only a half-bottle, but it would be amusing to us anyway.
Next, we counted out 30 of each colour of Skittle and dumped those into their separate bottles. Then we decided that didn't seem like enough and added 10 more. Then we still felt like adding more, so we added another 10, for a total of 50 Skittles per bottle. (I should point out here that this is about twice the amount used in the tutorial, and the tutorial was using about twice the vodka we did, making it serious overkill on our part. But hey, we were having fun and didn't care. It produced a very strong flavour in the final product, but we liked that and decided it had been a good idea.)
The next step is to wait. Occasionally you shake the plastic bottles and check to see what's happening in them. In about two hours, the vodka will completely strip the Skittles of their outer layer of colour, along with a bunch of the sugar from the inner candy. You'll know it's done when the Skittles themselves have been reduced to half size and the liquid has a layer of sort of foamy "head" along the top of it. If you're doing larger quantities when we did (our colour batches were each very small, as you can see), it'll probably take longer than two hours; I'd be tempted to leave the bottles out overnight, in fact.
Pretty rainbow!
The leftover pink quantity.
Next you have to filter the contents of each bottle to get rid of particulates and foamy residue "head". Originally we used paper coffee filters, as per the tutorial instructions, but that sucked. We lost a ton of liquid as it got soaked up by the filter, and it took a good half hour to go through it. FAIL.
I insisted we use the pink as a test run. Nobody thought I was being overly cautous AFTER something went wrong!
I remembered having seen a reusable coffee filter in the grocery store when I was buying the paper ones -- it was synthetic and thus wouldn't absorb half our product -- so my brother ran out to go buy one while Sarah and I waited. Luckily the grocery store is right next door, so it didn't take long.
In the meantime, Sarah and I noticed Eve was acting weird. She was doing some sort of wacky snakey contortionist yoga. I seriously have no idea what was going on there. I've seen her exploring and undulating around, obviously, but never contorting herself into a corner and just sitting there for half an hour. Especially not fully exposed when there are a bunch of people moving around right near her and all the lights in the room are on. It was very strange.
Eventually she wandered off back into her log hide, and my brother returned. Moving on.
We started with green. The reusable synthetic filter worked MUCH faster, but still left a lot of foamy particulate residue/"head". We thought it wouldn't be a big deal, but once we got it into the decorative bottle, it was REALLY obvious, so we decided we would have to filter each colour several times. Sure enough, subsequent bottles turned out much better, so we figured at the end we'd go back and refilter the green until it was just as nice too. (Again, if you're doing larger quantities, you could probably still use a paper filter, and it would likely catch all the particulate residue the first time through. It's just that because we were doing such small batches, we couldn't afford to lose even the small amount of liquid the filters absorb.)
Okay, so. For each colour, you dump the plastic bottle full of Skittles and vodka juice into your filter, above a container to catch what comes out. You swish the Skittles around to separate liquid from goop, then dump the Skittles in the garbage (ours tasted more like vodka than Skittles now, and were not delicious anymore), rinse out the filter, and run the liquid through it again.
And again... And again... And again.
Both the filter and the containers got a quick rinse between each filtering to wash away residue, so that we weren't just transfering it back and forth without getting rid of it.
After six filterings, we'd gotten rid of about as much foamy residue as we were going to with that method, so we stopped. Any remainder was carefully skimmed off with a spoon.
Finally it could be poured into the decorative bottle! ...At which point we discovered that the Skittles had added not just colour and flavour, but also volume, to the vodka. We now had slightly more than each decorative bottle could hold, so we filled them as far as we could and dumped the rest into some ramekins until we could decide what to do with it. Eventually my brother decided somebody should taste test our creations, and since he was the one driving (on a learner's license, no less, which means zero tolerance for ANY blood alcohol) and I'm allergic, it fell to Sarah -- the tiny lightweight -- to knock back the ramekins as shots.
We repeated this process with all of the colours...
And then there was some swing dancing...
I don't know why Matt looks like such a zombie here. He was actually being a big goofball and the dancing was all his idea.
They're actually better at it than they let on.
Honest. I swear.
And making Sarah drink ALL the rest of the extra...
Et voila! Skittle vodka! Now in six seven awesome colours and knock-your-socks-off sugary flavours!
I kind of want to keep them just because they're pretty, and they fill my kitchen with rainbow fun. But they're somebody's Christmas present, so I can't. Alas! They do taste good, though. Even I like them. I wouldn't want to drink a lot, but I don't actually like alcohol, so I'm a terrible guinea pig. I can see how it would go over really well at parties, though...