2 easy recipes for tea-infused gin

Tea cocktails seem to be all the rage these days. But you don’t need to go to a bar to try one. You can make one at home yourself.

Tea cocktails seem to be everywhere these days. Some bars do tea infusions, while others use brewed tea in their recipes to lace their concoctions with the drink’s delicate fragrance.

But with bars around the world closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, it might be hard to go out and try these cocktails. So why not make some at home?

Some bars, such as Tell Camellia in Hong Kong, make their own tea-infused spirits by brewing the leaves in alcohol and then distilling them with a rotovap.

(Read more: Molecular mixology: How Tell Camellia infuses tea with alcohol at its Hong Kong bar)

But you don’t need fancy equipment to do it at home. All you need is a jar, and some patience.

Here are two recipes for tea-infused gin, using pu’er and unsmoked lapsang souchong leaves. You can combine the ingredients in a jar and let them sit in room temperature for 48 hours before filtering out the bits.

These gins will have a bit of tannin from the tea and are great for making iced tea martinis or twists on the classic gimlet.

Recipes

 

Pu’er gin:

• 500 milliliters (16 ounces) of high-quality vodka
• 2 heaped tablespoons of loose-leaf pu’er tea
• 2 tablespoons of juniper berries (smash them with the back of a knife to release some oils first)
• 1 teaspoon of coriander seeds
• 1 teaspoon of cardamom
• A few strips of lemon peel

 

Unsmoked lapsang souchong gin:

• 500 milliliters (16 ounces) of high-quality vodka
• 3 heaped tablespoons of loose-leaf unsmoked lapsang souchong (If you use the smoked version, the gin will be very smoky, so we recommend 2 tablespoons when using smoked leaves)
• 2 tablespoons of juniper berries (smash them with the back of a knife to release some oils first)
• 1 teaspoon of fennel
• 1 teaspoon of coriander seeds
• 1 teaspoon of peppercorn
• A few strips of orange peel