We at Word of Mouth were intrigued recently by a regular's mention of smoked drinks: BeckyDavidson wondered if I could come up with a cheap DIY version of smoked vodka. Smoky flavours in drinks are hardly unknown; whiskies, especially those such as the wonderful Islay malts, can be gloriously smoky thanks to the malt drying process. I've smoked the odd bit of mackerel over the years but had never tried with drinks.

Never one to turn down a challenge, I thought I'd give Becky's suggestion a go. I devised my own equipment – tubes, tin cans and fire – taking me back to my teenage years making small rockets and squibs in my dad's shed(s). As with these juvenile experiments I quickly discovered that plan A wouldn't work and that neither would plan B. Plan C did: but the equipment is a bit dangerous to make and perhaps dangerous to use. That said, I had a lot of fun trying it out, Becky, and the burns are healing nicely, thank you.



I made a large hole in the middle of a soup can lid, washed it and removed the label, opened the kitchen windows and heated it directly on the gas hob to burn off any extraneous material. (It's important to do this thoroughly because tin cans are plastic-coated inside, and for this reason and just for safety's sake using a camping stove outside would have been better.)

John Wright's experimental vodka smoking apparatus. Photograph: John Wright

Once the can had cooled I enlarged the hole to take a demijohn cork, connected a length of plastic hose to the cork, put my sawdust mix (below) into the can, wrapped the cork in tinfoil to form a (largely ineffective) seal and inserted it into the hole. The can went back on the hob at a very low setting (again, outdoors would have been better), and I inserted the other end of the tube into a clean bottle containing a little vodka. Within minutes a few wisps of smoke appeared in the bottle – I ran the process for four or five minutes, closed the bottle and shook it to collect the condensed smoke from the sides.

It's possible to buy smoking chips ready-made and mixed with various flavourings, but more fun to make them. I cut up some oak from the shed for the sawdust – it shouldn't be bone dry so I stirred in a tiny amount of water and left it for an hour to soak. You can mix in all sorts of flavourings. I experimented with cloves, cinnamon, vanilla, allspice, juniper berries and chopped orange peel – the last being my favourite, and the cheapest. The oak smoke tends to dominate so at least one third of the mix should come from the other flavourings.

Other ideas for home smoking vodka include cloves, cinnamon, vanilla, allspice, juniper berries and chopped orange peel. Photograph: John Wright

A single measure of smoked vodka will contain a tiny fraction of the smoky residue you'd ingest at a summer barbecue or from standing next to a bonfire, but there is a cloud of health concerns hanging over smoked foods in general. For this reason, as well as the potential for burning or cutting yourself in the ramshackle DIY method I devised, I'd advise people seriously interested in home-smoking drinks to invest in a smoke gun; for the sake of 50 quid you'll be able to have a go at smoking just about anything.

There's plenty of reason to do so – the flavour of smoked vodka is quite a revelation – it tastes like one of the smoky malt whiskies; not a very refined one I admit, but a smoky malt whisky nevertheless (if it ends up too smoky it's easily remedied by adding more vodka). There's no reason why you cannot try this with other drinks – sloe gin with juniper berries in the mix, cider brandy using applewood sawdust, elderberry wine using elder sawdust. Maybe they'll taste awful but we won't know unless we try.