Skittles vodka

Recently on Google+ I came across the instructions for making Skittles vodka. I’ve since discovered that it’s nothing new and has been ‘a thing’ for many years, but I only just heard of it. Anyway, since I like Skittles and vodka, I thought I’d give it a go.

I’m generally not much of a drinker, apart from at Christmas and New Year. In fact I’ve had a few bottles of vodka knocking around for a number of years, and this gave me the perfect reason excuse to use some of it up.

I just needed to get some Skittles and a few bottles to keep the finished product in. I figured I’d just try it out small-scale at first, so I bought two 245g bags of Skittles, two small Roma Bottles from Amazon, and decided to go with just orange and blackcurrant to start with. After separating out enough of each colour (a bit of a chore), I put them into a couple of plastic water bottles and poured 200ml of vodka over the top of each. It takes just seconds for the vodka to start stripping the colour from the Skittles, but a day or two for them to completely dissolve.

Two days later, and we’re ready for the next step. This is where my first ‘mistake’ occurred. The instructions I had said that you can use coffee filters to remove the residue from the liquid. I have some Melitta filters for my coffee machine, so figured I’d use those. I placed a funnel in the top of one of the Roma bottles, lined it with the coffee filter, and started pouring the orange vodka through.

Unfortunately, it seems the coffee filters are much too fine; not only did it take a very long time to filter (over an hour, dripping slowly through the filter), it also prevented the colour from passing through, as you can see in the photo. So my orange vodka, sadly, looks like a bottle of urine! It also seems to have filtered out some of the flavour. There’s definitely a reasonable hint of orange in there, but it’s not too far from the neat vodka taste. So if you’re going to try this for yourself, my advice is don’t use coffee filters.

Having learned that lesson, I cleaned out the funnel and then used a square of kitchen towel to filter the blackcurrant solution. Not only did this allow the liquid to run through much faster (about ten minutes), it also allowed the colour to pass through, meaning that it actually has the same rich colouring as all the other images of Skittles vodka you’ll find around the web. The photos here were taken with the camera on my phone under fluorescent lighting, so the deep purple colour doesn’t really show that well – but you can see from the side-by-side shot that the blackcurrant has far stronger colouring than the orange. And it tastes delicious!

At some point I’ll get a few more Roma bottles and try the other flavours, or maybe even a mix of several. It’s definitely something worth trying if you have the time, and some vodka sitting around. Just remember when you’re drinking it that, despite the fruity taste, it is still neat vodka – don’t go too mad!