Drink the Rainbow – DIY Skittle Vodka

Have you ever wished you could brew your own hard liquor without killing yourself or ruining your bathtub? Every guy’s thought about a magical booze font that endlessly rains the water of life down on him, but since we can’t have that yet, and starting from scratch can be expensive and time consuming, we’re presenting one of the next best things: Skittle-infused Vodka. It’s fast, easy, delicious, and versatile.  I really wish I invented this idea; I imagine raunchy ads emblazoned with the perfect tag line: “get Skit-faced and puke the rainbow,” resulting in trillions of dollars, and me living out my life lounging in an orange-flavored pool surrounded by constantly tipsy models, living off a permanent buzz through osmosis. In any case, we stumbled across this brilliant idea in a number of DIY forums while mulling over affordable gifts for the holidays. Since no man wants to crochet personalized doilies, the idea of giving the gift of booze was an instant winner. We’ve documented the whole process for you so you too can get blasted in technicolor.

What you need to make Skittle Vodka:

• Vodka; don’t bother getting ridiculous, expensive “premium” stuff. We really like Wyborowa; it’s a Polish Vodka that’s well priced, has a good taste and just enough of that throat sizzling burn to put hair on your chest and melt a Skittle. We used about 700ml per colour in our experiments. Think about a small water bottle mostly filled.
• Skittles…Craploads of Skittles. We bought the mega pound bag, and found that dividing it into the specific colors yielded  enough of each for a good ratio of sugar to vodka. You can adjust Skittles to taste, and there’s nothing stopping you from hoarding them for a year and creating a batch to fill your hot tub.
• Bottles or jars to decant into. If you aren’t giving them away, then feel free to be lazy/cheap and rinse out plastic bottles that have a screw on lid. If you want them to look freakin’ awesome and impressive, try a dollar store- we found bar bottles with a pouring jig for a buck.
• Coffee filters. Hit up the dollar store again, you’ll be going through a fair amount of these as you refine your delicious nectar.

Step 1: Separate your Skittles into their component color groups and get them set up into whatever bottles you’ve decided to do the dissolving in. Make sure whatever you choose, final vessel or not, has a lid that screws or closes tight. Otherwise you’re in for a new delicious, abstract kitchen paint job. Shake these bottles like a crazy person. Tape them to your ankles and break dance, attach them to small children and pets then loose a cloud of bees; whatever you need to do to agitate. It will likely take a day or two for your skittles to dissolve fully. Twice a day or so, get all the gook shaken up off the bottom, rattle around your shrinking Skittles, and go back to ignoring them.

Step 2: Your Skittles are now a slurry in your containers, and you’ve got a weird foamy, film floating around in there. This is everything that you don’t want from your Skittle- namely, wax and whatever weird gummy crap holds one together. You could drink this; it’s part of the original Skittle, and is completely safe, but it’s pretty gross to have coating your face, and makes your Skittle Vodka look like someone jizzed in it. Provided you don’t have any solid, quasi-Skittles left, you can move on to the next step.

Step 3: Here’s where your coffee filters come in handy; in many of the instructions I’ve seen, you attach the coffee filter to a measuring cup, and slowly strain the Skittle vodka through. This takes forever, and I wanted my booze in the fastest possible way… what I ended up discovering is actually even more thorough than the drip drain method, but a bit messier. Set yourself up in your kitchen sink. You need something to strain into (a measuring cup is nice because it has a spout and a handle)  and something to hold your coffee filters while you pour the liquid into them. I used a small strainer, but a small cup or bowl would work as well. Place two filters into your holding device, and fill them up halfway. Take the edges of the filter, bring them together into a little pouch with the liquid inside, and slowly twist to force the vodka through. This goes way faster, and squeezes all the liquid out of the paper and out of the sediment. Your hands will get a bit wet, but you will lose very little booze and licking your fingers is like licking a delicious fruity battery. I needed about 4-6 filters per color, per time strained. Overall, I used about 50, so the dollar store pack was a life saver. I managed to strain 5 of my 6 colors this way in the time it took the one dripping to finish about half way, and did a much better job of it. As an important note, don’t assume that squeezing as hard as you can will strain much faster. Imagine squeezing a water balloon full of dye as hard as you can in your grandmother’s spotless white room full of antiques- this is a no no. A splattery, splattery no no.

Step 4: Pour. Seriously, that’s all there is to it. If you’re like me, tip your head back and calculate the liquid trajectory so as to maximize efficiency. If you are that awesome thoughtful man that guys and girls alike love, carefully pour into your containers, and pop them in the freezer for a while before dolling them up to hand out. They taste exactly like a Skittle, and you don’t even have to chew! Great over ice, as shooters, and awesome with a neutral mixer like 7up or Ginger Ale. It’s a perfect handmade gift that looks massively impressive and it’s pretty much guaranteed to get you laid, or at least get shared with you after opening.