Off flavors from vodka tincture?

Anyone have any experience with the vodka used to make a spice tincture adding off/foul flavors to a beer? I've done a few recipes that called for a tincture to be made (one had a full cup/8oz of vodka being used for the tincture). Now they said to use the cheapest/rotgut vodka I could find since it didn't matter. So that's what I did, what I bought I wouldn't drink if it was the last thing on earth, it certainly has a taste to it.

So, I used that as directed and in the three beers I did it there's a similar... metallic/medicinal sort of off flavor. It might be some other flaw in the process, they were some of my earlier beers but the one thing all of them have in common is that method of Vodka based extraction.

So, does the quality of the vodka matter? (even though your often encouraged to use the cheapest) Would I be better off using watered down Everclear or just a more expensive vodka to do the extraction and avoid introducing a taste? Am I crazy and is what I'm tasting something else....?

IMHO, 8 oz is waaaaaay too much vodka to add to 5-gal of beer. People vary on their sensitivity to that alcohol twang, but this is still a lot.

Do an experiment for yourself -- add 1 tsp of the vodka to a 12oz beer since that's the equivalent of 8 oz per 5 gal. I can guarantee you'll taste it. Now try 1 tsp of the best top-shelf vodka on earth. You'll hate that, too.

I haven't made tinctures for beer, but I've made limoncello. Basically it lots of lemon zest steeped in vodka then back sweetened. I've found that Smirnoff 100 proof works best, tastes neutral and is relative inexpensive.

Were I to make a tincture, that's what I would use.


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I have a brita water jug thingy that I use for just that purpose. I usually run about 10 passes through it when using cheap vodka.



Helps to take the bite away, but I've also found that if I use to much alcohol in tincture it still taste hot, but that will fade with age.I used a tincture in a keg for orange flavoring and it was hot in the beginning but a couple weeks in it mellowed fine.

It might depend on what you are making a tincture off. I've been reading up on this, and at least the distilling folks talk about using different concentrations of alcohol with different herbs/spices. They say that for some ingredients, at higher ABVs some undesireable flavors can be extracted. And for others, you want the higher ABV. Their advice is to experiment with different ABV's. I've yet to find a table with recommendations for different herbs and spices

I don't understand why they would recommend crappy ingredients. Crappy flavors in ingredients will result in crappy flavor. Maybe 8 oz. in 5G is minimal, but with the cost of a batch, 4 shots of decent vodka won't affect your cost too much.

I've heard that crappy vodka was run through a Brita many times, per Revvy, and it came out tasting great. I wouldn't use "top shelf" vodka, but I would never put crap ingredients of any type in my beer.

I also believe in tasting everything that goes into my beer, and tasting the beer at every step. It is very educational.

I wouldn't use vodka that actually tastes bad, that's asking for trouble, but something like Smirnoff is fine. Definitely don't buy Grey Goose or whatever, that stuff is pure ripoff. I also wouldn't forsee any problems with 8oz in 5 gallons, so long as it's not a beer you intend to drink right away. I make a lot of liqueurs, basically infused vodkas mixed with sugar water, and after about a month in the fridge that "vodka" taste is gone leaving just the other components. A teaspoon in a glass of beer would taste nasty, but if you put a teaspoon in a bottle of beer and recap it I bet you couldn't tell the vodka was there after a couple weeks.

Honestly, my guess is that your spices might be the culprit. Lots of spices, especially woody ones, have medicinal or metallic flavor components that can show up when they're used heavily or extracted very well, as they would be in an alcohol tincture. Cutting down the amount of spices might help. You could also try just tossing spices in the boil instead of infusing separately, but I think that would help less because of vodka flavor and more because you wouldn't be pulling as much out of the spices.

Say you were adding limoncello to a beer, for example a pale ale or ipa or any tincture; would you add pre or post fermentation? And if it were a sugary liquor would that negatively affect the beer if those sugars aren't fermented or possibly affect the carbonation level in a bottle conditioned beer?

Limoncello? That could be interesting - I might have to pull ours out of the freezer and dose a pint of pale just to see what it tastes like.

Definitely add it post-fermentation, there's no good reason to do it before.
And unless you poured in a heck of a lot, I doubt you could budge the carbonation level even a little bit...

Cheers!

I did a tincture of blood orange in 400ml of 100 proof vodka. I soaked it 2 weeks, then when bottling, I kept trying samples by teaspoon, until I realized I just needed to dump the entire amount in my Hefe. It came out with a very slight orange taste.

Oh, and I also threw peels and some orange pigs in the primary. Still, only a slight citrus taste.

The beer did not taste alcoholicy hot, probably because I used neutral tasting vodka. I now am soaking strawberries.

Ya, I've done one since these experiences and ignored the directions advice to use the crappiest vodka I could find.

Ended up using some very clean tasting Grand Traverse Distillery vodka for the tincture. No off flavors at all from it, made a great spice infusion for a winter warmer last Christmas.

I got the vodka distillery online for tincture and do not find any off flavors.

I made a habanero mango IPA using a vodka tincture and didn't notice any off flavors. I only added about 1 oz to a 3 gallon batch and used good vodka too. I never forget the advice of a chef I used to work with - "If I won't drink it, I won't cook with it either!"