The Nutty Booze Infusion You've Been Overlooking

Infusing liquor is a rewarding crafting activity for adults that requires little effort for maximum flavor. To jazz up your favorite spirits with fresh new flavors, let herbs, spices, fruits, or other ingredients steep into the liquor for an extended period of time — it's really that simple! Eventually, the liquor will extract and adopt the flavors from the added ingredients, giving it a new dimension of flavor. Although some common liquor infusions may include fruits like strawberries and oranges, spices like cinnamon and nutmeg, and herbs like mint and basil, there's an entirely different food source you may be overlooking — toasted pine nuts.

You read that right – pine nuts aren't just for pesto. These nut-like seeds flaunt a rich, buttery, and delicately sweet flavor profile that deepens with a toasty finish when frizzled on the stove or roasted in the oven. Sure, toasted pine nuts are great for integrating into the usual suspects, like trail mix or salad garnishes, but they also make for a mouthwatering liquor infusion. When steeped in liquor, toasted pine nuts introduce a layer of earthy, fatty goodness accented by a rustic, warm, and nutty sweetness that provides cocktails with a subtle yet present complexity.

Toasted pine nuts are surprisingly versatile and pair well with many different types of liquors and spirits. These grain-sized seeds can impart the caramel-tinted taste of bourbon with a cozy undercurrent, mingle with the floral flavor of gin for a spring-inspired finish, harmonize with the sugarcane sweetness of rum, or bestow a flavor of its own upon the neutral and mild-mannered taste of vodka. 

Infusing spirits doesn't require any special skills. However, there are a few tips worth keeping in mind to ensure a well-balanced and gracefully nutty flavor in your go-to liquors.

Before you steep the seeds in liquor, you'll want to toast them to unlock a deeper flavor. To effectively toast pine nuts, you can add them to a pan and stir them around on a stovetop, roast them in the oven or air fryer, or fire them up in the microwave. Roast until golden brown and fragrant — et voilà — toasted pine nuts primed for macerating. Although it may go without saying, always use fresh nuts to guarantee a more prominent flavor infusion.

Now for the fun part. Pour your liquor into a large air-tight glass container containing your freshly toasted pine nuts. The liquor-to-seed ratio depends on how intense you want the infusion to taste, but a good rule of thumb is a quarter cup of nuts for every cup of liquor. Adjust according to taste. Let the pine nuts steep in the liquor for about a month before straining through a fine mesh strainer or cheesecloth. To ensure a smooth finish, double straining is never a bad idea. Incorporate pine nut-kissed liquor into an espresso martini, old-fashioned, or pina colada. Don't limit yourself either, there are endless cocktail recipes that can benefit from the nutty notes of a pine nut-infused liquor.