Infusion is the transfer of flavor compounds from a solid ingredient into a liquid through steeping. Tea is the most familiar example: you steep leaves in hot water and the water picks up their flavor. In cocktail applications, infusion is used to make flavored syrups (lavender syrup, rosemary syrup), flavored liquids, and to add character to a base without changing its volume significantly. The variables are time, temperature, and ratio — a longer steep or higher temperature extracts more, but also risks extracting bitter, tannic, or off-flavors.
Why It Matters
Infusion is how you add flavors that don't exist in commercial products. Want a cocktail that tastes like cardamom and earl grey? You need to infuse. It's accessible, inexpensive, and produces ingredients you can't buy anywhere.
Where You'll Use It
Making flavored simple syrups, flavored teas, infused shrubs, or any drink component that requires a custom flavor.
Worth Knowing
Maceration
Maceration is a specific type of infusion where fruit or botanicals are soaked in a liquid (often a sugar solution or spirit) to extract flavor and color over time without heat. Cherries macerated in sugar syrup, citrus peels left in simple syrup overnight — these are macerations. The process is slower than hot infusion but gentler, preserving more delicate aromatic compounds.
Extraction
Extraction describes removing specific compounds from a solid into a liquid — flavor, color, aromatic oils, bitterness, tannins. All infusions are extractions, but the term is also used more precisely to describe isolating specific flavor fractions: acid extraction, tannin extraction, essential oil extraction.
Sous Vide Infusion
Sous vide infusion uses a water bath held at a precise temperature (typically 60°C) to accelerate the infusion process while preventing the off-flavors that high heat can introduce. What might take weeks of cold infusion takes hours in a sealed bag sous vide. Particularly useful for fat washing and herb infusions.