I’m all for innovation – up to a point. Dentistry, engineering, vaccines, absolutely. Beware, though, of innovation for its own sake. To wit: When first stumbling afoul of something like bacon infused bourbon, I reckoned that it was a quirky little drink that was worth a glass or two. After all, it’s bacon and its bourbon ergo, we are containing in one glass the best of both worlds.
After rigorous testing, I am sad to report that the above is over selling it a bit. True, both bacon and bourbon are things most people truly love, but most of us really love lively sex and having the family around for the holidays – but you can’t have both at the same table. Which is as good a metaphor for bacon bourbon as any.
In full disclosure, once I read the recipe for this ambitiously useless snort, I decided that this was no place for a great bourbon, or even a good mixer bourbon. While avoiding rotgut, I absolutely did not splash out for this little experiement.
Still, don’t just take my word for it, whip up a batch yourself.
Bacon Infused Bourbon
Take a solid mid-shelf bourbon (we used Maker’s Mark), take a snort for bravery, and fill up most of a mason jar.
Fry up three or four slices of bacon, as unflavored as you can find it. This is not the time for maple syrup. For that matter, this really isn’t the time to move on to step three, either, but here we are.
You’d think that the next step bought be to stick the bacon in the jar and steep it like tea. You’d be wrong. Just eat the bacon. Pour the grease into the bourbon - at a ratio of ten to one. A little bit goes a long way. Cap it and give it a shake and but it in the fridge. Leave it overnight. What is going to happen is that fat and bourbon won’t mix and will separate fairly quickly.
The next day you’ll have a greasy cap of pork fat sitting atop you bourbon, which is pretty easy to remove with a skimmer. Then strain the bourbon through coffee filter.
What you have left is bourbon infused with bacon. The flavor is interesting, it tastes pretty much exactly how you think that it would. The issue is the texture: It tastes like greasy bacon infused bourbon. Repeated attempts at refinement could never actually get rid of the slick that clung to your teeth like oil on a baby duckling. In fact, so persistent was the problem that we found ourselves unable to take an appetizing photo, so we used that swell shot without any bacon whatsoever.
In Sum: Don’t put bacon in your bourbon.