Take a Mason jar half full of “Herman The German Sour Apple Balls” candy. Fill it to the brim with Laird’s Applejack. Let it sit at room temperature for a week. Pour concoction over a couple of ice cubes in a rocks glass.
Back in the day, we used to mix half Jack Daniels and half Apple Pucker. It actually makes for a surprisingly ok shot. IIRC it was called an Apple Jack.
I feel like we also used to make one called Black Jack, half Jack Daniels, half Black Haus (blackberry schnapps).
There’s a YouTube guy whose video shorts were showing up in my feed for awhile who does this— he puts various things in a mason jar, fills it up with different types of liquor (I mean, one thing and one type of liquor per “experiment”), lets it sit for a week, and then samples the result, giving it a score between 1-10.
Some of his “experiments” are weird, like soaking, say, sardines in liquor, but others I wouldn’t mind trying- like when he dissolved a bunch of Werther’s candies in rum or vodka and ended up with a delicious caramel liquer. I think that one got an 11 out of 10 score!
Some coworkers and I once poured cheap no-name vodka in a large jug with plums from my neighbor’s tree and a cup of sugar. Let it sit in a cool place for two months and voila! Plum vodka. Or something. It was drinkable, anyway.
Nothing like the “tricks” above, but they made me think of the Tequila Watermelons we’d make in college.
Drill a hole in one end of a watermelon, pour in some salt and more tequila than you should, let it marinate for a day or two.
Tip: Do not volunteer to cut up the watermelon while your date keeps feeding you random pieces. I still remember the uncertainty of being lightheaded while trying to control a machete…
We did a taste test and even a lowly coffee filter helped “round out the edges” of a cheap single malt (Trader Joe’s Islay Storm).
eta: I looked it up, and one reviewer’s last note was: “As a drinking whisky, it has a similar appeal to picking a scab or chewing a chapped lip: unpleasant, but uniquely and compellingly so.”
Buy a few vanilla beans, put them in a jar/bottle with vodka, let sit for a few months, and you’ve got some great vanilla extract for a lot less than you’d pay for store-bought. And as you use it, just top it up with more vodka. You can do that for years with the same beans. More details here.
I’m not recommending drinking the stuff. You can try it if you want, I guess. I haven’t. I just use it in cooking.
At the mini-mart I worked at in high school, after closing we’d occasionally mix Richard’s Wild Irish Rose with the slushies. Can’t say whether it improved either one.
I always make raspberry gin for Christmas, start in July with the best Scottish raspberries, fill a wine bottle to half way, add a few table spoons of sugar, top up with gin. Leave in a dark place till Christmas, shaking it occasionally. Makes superb liqueur and the gin soaked raspberries are fantastic to top ice cream.