Aged & Infused Review

Ever get tired of plain old delicious whiskey? Me neither. But around here the motto is “Drink Curious” or as I like to say, “Try all the drinks.”

Aged & Infused makes whiskey infusion kits. Similar to those meal delivery kits you’ve seen ads for or heard about on podcasts, all of the ingredients are individually pre-packaged and designed for ease of use. The process is simple: Open the jar and remove the packages of ingredients, open packages and put ingredients back in the jar, fill the jar with bourbon, wait one week, enjoy.

My infusion was “Apple-A-Day” and included dried apples, cinnamon sticks, and a vanilla bean. I used Wild Turkey 101 bourbon because I like Wild Turkey 101 bourbon. You can use what you like or maybe something you don’t like enough to drink neat. The resulting infusion tasted like bourbon apple pie. While not cloying, the sweetness was a little too much for me to enjoy straight. Fortunately, the kit included a cocktail recipe.

SWEATER WEATHER COCKTAIL

• 1½ oz Apple-A-Day infused bourbon
• 2 oz apple cider
• ½ oz lemon juice
• Shake ingredients together with ice, strain over fresh ice, garnish with cinnamon sugar.

The Sweater Weather is decent, but essentially whiskey and juice. Regular Bourbon & Banter readers might correctly guess that I drink a lot of cocktails. As such, cocktails with cider (or OJ for that matter) tend to fall flat for me as they lack punch and can muddy the flavors. If you don’t cocktail as hard as I do, maybe you’ll love it. Perhaps next time, I’d try hard cider for some added fizz.

Since I had plenty of Apple-A-Day leftovers, I thought I’d try it in some classic cocktails. Spirit forward cocktails like Old Fashioneds and Manhattans seemed out of balance. I found that Apple-A-Day worked better with a stronger supporting cast. It made a delicious Gold Rush (2 oz Apple-A-Day, ¾ oz honey syrup, ¾ oz lemon juice, shake and strain over ice). It made a great Buck. I also enjoyed it in a Reverse Manhattan, which oddly enough reminded me of putting a shot of sweet vermouth in hot cider. (Yeah, that’s right, I said I like sweet vermouth in hot cider after saying I don’t like cider in cocktails. I’m full of contradictions.)

The Aged & Infused packaging is great, and I’ll continue to use the jar for other cocktail purposes. I’d be curious to try their Navel Gazer orange and Wake-Up Call coffee infusions and look forward to future offerings.

Disclaimer: Aged & Infused provided Bourbon & Banter with a sample of their product for this review. We appreciate their willingness to allow us to review their products with no strings attached. Thank you.