If you’ve ever added a splash of whiskey to your mug of tea, you know the flavors can pair very nicely. Tea softens whiskey’s bite while whiskey adds warmth and complexity. Inspired by the success of our Earl Grey Goose, we decided to see what a tea  infusion would do to a traditional old-fashioned. We decided to use spicy and robust rye as the base for our Spiced Chai Black Tea infusion. With a strong flavor of its own, the tea needed to steep for only two hours to infuse well.

Instructions

Add 1 tablespoon of loose leaf chai black tea and 8 ounces of rye whiskey to a sealable jar. Let sit for 2 hours, strain the tea and transfer to a bottle before using.

With more time, the subtle tea flavor will enhance, but the spices become unpleasantly strong. With a straight, unflavored tea, try infusing a few hours longer or overnight to start.

Spicy Old Fashioned Recipe

Add a little (or more if you like) simple syrup to an old-fashioned glass with ice.
Add a dash of bitters.
Add 2 ounces of chai-infused rye whiskey
Stir
Garnish with a twist of orange

Hopefully, this recipe inspires experimentation. Scotch, bourbon, rye, and tea share many characteristics  and can enhance one another, whether enjoyed side by side or blended. Mix and match and let us know what works for you!

Infusing alcohol is a creative way to put a personal stamp on your favorite cocktail recipes and preserve the flavor of the season’s glorious fruits, herbs, and flowers. Enjoy your infusions all summer long or reward your shoveling in February with the taste of sunshine.

While fresh ingredients take days or even weeks to fully infuse, tea and spice infusions reach their best flavor fairly quickly and make a great place to start. Vodka’s neutral flavor makes it pretty foolproof as far adding ingredients goes. When choosing a base for your infusion, keep in mind that a higher alcohol content will increase the extraction power. High proof spirits (100 proof or higher) are diluted with water to a drinkable level once the infusion is complete. If you’re sticking to tea, which infuses easily, a lower alcohol (80 proof) content is perfectly fine, no dilution required.

What you’ll need

Vodka, 80 proof. We use Grey Goose, because we like to be fancy, it’s very drinkable infused, and because of the word Grey.

Loose leaf Earl Grey black tea. We also offer an organic version, but conducted our experiment with our standard Earl Grey. Both use 100% real oil of bergamot, extracted from the rind of bergamot oranges.

A tea strainer. We used the Hook Handle Tea Infuser, a simple metal strainer. If you’re using a finer cut of tea, you may want to strain the infusion through a coffee filter.

The Ratio

For every 1 cup of vodka, we added 1 teaspoon of loose leaf tea.

The Method

Add your desired amount of vodka and tea, in the ratio above, to a mason jar or other sealable container. Add the lid and shake to combine. Let it sit in a cool place, away from light. The flavor should be just right at 12 hours, but you can definitely drink it much earlier. After just a few hours the vodka will be tasty, but the bergamot flavor dominates. It takes a longer time for the black tea flavor to emerge, and it’s worth waiting a few more hours for. Enjoy  it cold, strained over ice, make yourself a martini, or try it with grapefruit soda (the earl greyhound).