Hi Amelia -

If you were to do just one pepper and leave it in the bottle permanently, I doubt anything bad would happen, and it would be pretty. But for cayenne vodka, I would recommend putting more than one pepper in, because cayenne flavor is a little one-dimensional and my suspicion is that one pepper only would give you heat but little pepper aroma or taste.

To tone down the heat and let some of the pepper character come through, you would probably want to remove the seeds and the inner membranes from the peppers before infusing - that means the seeds, the white pith, AND the very thin layer of whitish-pink veined flesh on the inside of the pepper. The skin and the deep red flesh are where the flavor and aroma are, but there’s still some heat there. If you find that the resulting infusion lacks the desired punch after a week or two, put in another whole pepper with seeds included, and sample daily until the desired pain level is reached.

But know this - capsaicin is much heavier than ethyl alcohol or water and tends to sink to the bottom of the bottle. No matter which way you go, shake the bottle before each serving or that last couple ounces is going to be undrinkable.

As for my crazy experiments, the poblano wasn’t too great - poblanos have a grassy character that dominated, without giving too much heat. Next time I will probably use seeded and de-veined habaneros. The ginger was merely OK - it takes a surprising amount of ginger to impart a distinctive ginger character to vodka. The cranberry was pretty good - a beautify ruby hue (the fruit came out of the infusion pallid and flabby - it really gave up a lot of character) with a nice tartness. The orange was extremely successful, a beautiful color with a lot of orange character.

If you’re going to infuse vodkas, I’d recommend not doing what we did, which is to buy the cheapest stuff we could get and then try to filter out the heavier molecules that impart harshness. Despite good initial indications, it only works so well and the cheap vodka doesn’t mix as well as even midrange hooch. Instead, get a decent bottle of grain vodka - a midrange one like Gordon’s - and use that. The base hooch really ought to be drinkable on its own.

I haven’t tried infusing in a while, and you remind me that I’ve been meaning to try a spiced vodka with cinnamon, green cardamom, clove, allspice and maybe just a tiny bit of cumin. Now I have a project! Thanks!

Hope this helps, and good luck!

Drunkle Johno