(We take a break from your regularly scheduled programming for an important announcement)

For the last couple of holiday season’s, my wife and I have been infusing vodka to give as presents to people.  This helped us out when we were saving money for our wedding, we were still able to give people presents and honor what they asked us to do for the holidays – which was “Save your money, you’ll need it for the wedding.” I’d like to say our vodka is known in the Rockies, and I think getting two paragraphs in the Denver Post still counts towards that end. 😉

This year’s holiday hooch was cinnamon spice-vanilla vodka.  The recipe is fairly easy to follow.

3-6 cinnamon sticks (depends on your love of cinnamon)

20-30 clove sticks

1 nutmeg, cracked in half

10-15 allspice

1 vanilla bean, cut in half and each half sliced lengthwise

1 big-ass bottle of vodka

The recipe is fairly simple – take all solid ingredients and drop into the bottle of vodka.  Wait for infusion.

Then you set the vodka in a cool, dry place for 4-6 weeks – depending on how strong you want the infusion.

Feel free to add vodka to anything you wish to spice up, from tea to hot apple cider (a favorite) to Sprite and more!  The great thing about this recipe is you can add whatever you want, replace whatever you want – the previous year’s recipe included pumpkin and orange instead of cinnamon and allspice.