Shoot the Rainbow

[sleepymaggie]

Shoot the Rainbow, originally uploaded by applesticker.

Skittles Vodka is in progress.

Comments

[virginhuntress.livejournal.com]

That scares me a little. Can't wait to see you all there. :)

[fairerhiannon.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not the only one a little scared of those bottles!

It'll be interesting to see how this turns out!

[maereth.livejournal.com]

I expected the liquid to be a little more... clear. Will it become less foggy over the next few days?

[sleepymaggie.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of stuff in skittles that's currently making the liquid opaque -- like all the hydrogenated fat. This stuff is called "ming" apparently.

After a few days of letting the skittles dissolve we're going to strain each bottle a number of times to take out all the fat. This *should* result in very clear, but colorful, liquids.

[hypatia42.livejournal.com]

Ooo. Will you post pictures of that as well?

[sleepymaggie.livejournal.com]

I'm going to document the whole process in pictures.

You can see more pictures of the initial work here: Shoot the Rainbow

[elmo-iscariot.livejournal.com]

When I made mine, the crud looked like this:



This was from the first pass, and it creeped me out enough that I did the rest of the fat removal through a Brita filter. I also haven't eaten Skittles since. ;)

[hypatia42.livejournal.com]

Meh, looks like icing made from shortening. Disgusting sugary mess of fat and color. I can appreciate why you wouldn't want to eat Skittles after that though.

[geeksdoitbetter.livejournal.com]

wow

was your filter permanently scarred (stained)?

[merinslips.livejournal.com]

They look delicious.

[elmo-iscariot.livejournal.com]

I like the white Skittle-cores in the bottom--it looks like an etched deco on the bottle. :)

Have you been shaking the bottles occasionally, BTW? In my go-round, turning the bottles end-over-end every few days really helped to dissolve 'em.

[hypatia42.livejournal.com]

They dissolve completely?

[elmo-iscariot.livejournal.com]

They did for me. I had the wixture together for about a week, shaking and turning every two days, and ended up with a solution that would separate out into two layers: sugary vodka on the bottom, and fat suspended in sugary vodka on top. It's the white "meat" of the candy that most of the fat seems to come from.

Frankly, it might be interesting to do a controlled experiment: half a batch with the whole Skittle dissolved and half a batch with only the outer layers dissolved off. The latter would presumably be less sweet (I assume most of the sweeteneres are in the "meat" of the Skittles), but it also might turn out that the outer layer is mostly coloring, without much flavor.

Mmm... Booze science... :D

[hypatia42.livejournal.com]

Interesting experiment idea. I think I would have to use the wild berry skittles though. Much prefer their flavor.

[siriciryon.livejournal.com]

I once worked at a Baskin-Robbins and had the stupidity to taste straight food coloring.
It's nasty-bitter.
So, if the coloring is primarily in the outer layer and the sugar is not (which seems likely), there would probably be a faint aftertaste not covered by the sugar, though it might be covered by the alcohol.

[sleepymaggie.livejournal.com]

Our skittles actually completely dissolved last night (approx. 6 hours after putting them in the vodka). We're trying to decide if we should wait another day before straining.

Right now we have bottles of opaque colored liquid with a mess of whiter solids on top.

[elmo-iscariot.livejournal.com]

I saw that in the Flickr gallery, and it confused me. I suspect it's because you used fewer Skittles than I did, but I suppose it could also be a difference in the vodka... :\