Making Skittles vodka takes a bit of time, but is worth the effort when it’s done. There are a few steps to the process: gathering the materials, sorting the candy and letting it dissolve, and the laborious part: straining the candy out of the vodka. The good news is that if you’re willing to invest a few hours, you’ll end up with five bottles of Skittles infused vodka to drink as you see fit.
Skittles Vodka
- 5 bottles vodka (750 ml each)
- 4 family size bags Skittles (41 oz size)
Prep Time:
Total Time:
Some things that you will likely also need for preparing and filtering Skittles vodka include: two large pitchers or containers, several bags of cheesecloth, handheld kitchen strainer, a funnel, coffee filters, and an empty liquor bottle for excess vodka. To make things even quicker near the end, you may also want to have a French press or Aeropress, both normally used for coffee, on hand. These make the fine straining of the vodka at the end much quicker.
Step one is sorting out the Skittles by color. Using a couple of friends to help sort candy will make this go pretty fast. One thing that I noticed is that there isn’t an even distribution of colors over a random set of Skittles. When we made our Skittles vodka, we barely had enough yellow, but we had plenty of grape left over.
The next step is counting out how many Skittles to put in each bottle of vodka. I already knew from previous research that you need ten Skittles for each ounce of vodka you want to infuse. That’s about 250 Skittles for a 750ml bottle, or 125 Skittles for a 375ml bottle. I measured out the Skittles in a measuring cup and discovered that 250 Skittles is a little over one cup, so a half-cup would be enough for the 375ml bottles, if those are what you’re infusing.
The next step is to pour out some vodka from each bottle so that the candy will fit. That’s why we have an empty bottle on hand: to hold that excess vodka until the last step. Add the appropriate amount of candy to replace the vodka you set aside from each bottle. Let the bottles of vodka sit for about a day. Give them a hefty shake every few hours to speed up the dissolving process.
Once a day has passed, and the candy has dissolved, the vodka is going to be thick and syrupy, with a white film of candy floating on the top. We tried several different methods for filtering. What worked for me was using two pitchers to alternate pouring vodka into. On each pass of the filtration, I used cheesecloth to get the large chunks of candy out. I went through 4 packages of cheesecloth, that were 3 square yards each.
For the next level of purification, I used a hand strainer with a coffee filter inside to get the remaining candy film out. Later, I switched to using a coffee press with its built-in mesh strainer to make the process even faster. Be sure to rinse the pitcher you just used each time to get rid of lingering candy film.
Once you have the Skittles vodka to a point of purification that you can live with, it’s time to pour the excess vodka from the first step back into the bottles. There was a little bit of vodka that was lost during the whole process, but not very much.
Learning how to make Skittles vodka was a learning process for me. Even though I did a lot of research beforehand, I still figured out methods that worked best for me and the equipment I had on hand. The green and orange colors took the most effort to clarify; for some reason those colors dissolve into pure goop, not large chunks like the other flavors. Now that you’ve got your Skittles infused vodka on hand, the only question is what drinks you’re going to make with them.
In the bonus video below, we tasted all five flavors of the Skittles infused vodka. Grape was surprisingly good, the green apple made me want to make an Appletini with it, the lemon was pretty decent. The strawberry Skittles vodka ended up having a bit of a burn on the aftertaste, and the orange had a mellow burn with a robust taste.
Rate this Drink Recipe
Tags: debauchery, friends, grape, green apple, lemon, millennials, orange drinks, strawberry, vodka
About the author
You’ll like these: http://www.squidoo.com/how-to-make-jolly-rancher-vodka or http://www.squidoo.com/how-to-make-vodka-bears
Hello Armond. We’ve actually already done the Vodka Gummy Bears and the Jolly Rancher Vodka is on our list. I appreciate you stopping by. Peace.
I want to try this, is there a shelf live on this? Like, if I make it and set it back on the bar for a while will it go bad after a while?
As far as I can tell, the shelf life is the same as any other liquor. Ours don’t appear to be turning at all, the ones that are left, that is. The grape has a bit of a reddish hue. You might want to try a drop of blue food coloring to balance the color out ( Disclaimer: I haven’t tried that myself).
And would it be weird to add purple food color to the grape?
[…] 15. Skittles Vodka […]
Have you tried filtering your vodka (before adding the Skittles) thru a PUR Water pitcher? I have done this with vodka, moonshine and tequila blanco – it make a much smoother liquor and is worth the effort. I usually filter 5-7 times.
Hi Kelly: In the video that accompanies the article, I mention I had thought about using a Brita water filter or an Aeropress to filter. Those methods probably also work, as you mention. There are many ways to get to the result, this is just how I did it.
What can I do if it’s a bit strong????
Hi Roxie, you can always dilute the vodka with a mixer like 7-up or a weaker alcohol.