One Good Ritual

Goal

The goal of this drink was to invoke that flavor of a peanut butter banana protein shake after a good workout.

Method

I ran several jars testing peanut infusion in standard Maker’s Mark. I wanted the soft, sweet, wheaty flavor of Maker’s to let the peanut butter and banana be the stars.

2oz Peanut infused and washed Maker’s Mark
0.5oz Demerara Banana Cheong
2 Dashes Black Walnut Bitters

Built in the glass, stirred until chilled (not full dilution)

Banana slice for garnish

What Worked

Peanut infused and peanut oil wash resulted in a better base spirit.

Banana cheong works quite well. No noticeable difference between peel and flesh flavor or aroma extraction.

Demerara extracts much faster than white sugar.
Demerara resulted in much more caramel flavors, roasted, darker banana compared to the sharper, fresh banana flavor of the white sugar.

Notes

Two jars infusing 10% and 20% by weight peanut butter. These were…successful. 20% was correct, but there was a fairly unimpressive extraction yield. The total yield was about 70%. The jars were left to infuse at about 72F for 12 hours and then placed in the freezer for about 10 hours.

I then ran another jar infusing pulverized roasted peanuts, again at 20% by weight of the spirit. This worked significantly better. No nut-milk bag used for this round of infusion. This jar was then filtered and peanut oil fat washed as the straight peanut infusion got the flavor but not the texture, therefore peanut oil wash was the logical next step. The peanut oil wash, 5 hours counter and overnight freezer worked as expected.

I should have read better, but the Auto-Justino method does not work with spirits lower than 150 proof. 3 days in a jar of Maker’s and the banana began breaking down and the jar became loaded with this cloudy substance. Cheong may be the current better ingredient. The next trial may attempt to make a banana-cello..bananino? Might be interesting to mix the bananacello into the peanut infused maker’s. That should actually keep the proof modest while delivering banana flavor.

The goal was, almost, to create a one-bottle drink. Infuse peanut, infuse banana, fat wash. But I think the order of operations (peanut infusion, fat wash, banana infusion) may also have led to what is now known as “Horror Banana” in the kitchen. Imagine though, pulling out a freezer-cold bottle of Maker’s Mark, pouring the otherwise innocuous spirit into a glass, stirring on ice and the entire drink is just there..