What is an infinity bottle?

An infinity bottle, by a basic definition, is just a personal blend of whiskey. It gets the name “infinity bottle” because the idea is that the bottle is a blend of the whiskey that is continuously added to it. Never ending. To romanticize it a bit, even after filling it, sampling it, adding more, sampling more, adding again, and so on, there will always be at least a little bit of even the very first whiskey added to the infinity bottle. But this isn’t the only way to do it. It’s your blend. Do with it what you choose. Let’s walk through what you need to start one and what you can do with it.

What do I need?

A Container

First, you need an empty container. If you read my Buying Guide to Whiskey, that word “container” should throw up some flags for you. We are talking about an infinity “bottle” but the reality is you can use whatever you want. You’ll just want to make sure that it’s easy for you to add whiskey to, sample whiskey from, and seal it when it’s just sitting still.

You can use an empty bottle that you bought from the dollar store, a fancy decanter you found on Amazon or a high end store. You use a unique bottle that you like from a whiskey you just finished. Heck, you don’t even have to have finished it. Leave a little in there. Let that be your first or base whiskey for your infinity bottle. How much do you leave? That’s up to you.

Back to that word “container”, it doesn’t have to be a bottle at all. You can use a small barrel if you want to impart your own barrel impact if you want an infinity cask. You can find small casks online. You can even buy a used barrel from a distillery if you can find one that’s selling them. Just know that if you choose a large cask, you’ll want to find a way to sample it other than trying to tip it and pour it into your glass: a whiskey thief, a shot glass on a chain, something. Something else to understand about casks is that if it’s a new barrel like the small hobby barrels that are fairly easy to find or if the large barrel your local distillery sold you has sat awhile, there’s a good chance that you’ll need to get the wood to swell back up with some hot water before putting whiskey in it. You may also want some wax to help plug any leaks that do occur.

There may be other complications with a barrel too. If the whiskey is in there too long, you can start to get some funky and undesirable flavors from the wood, which could ruin the whole thing. How long? That depends on the size of the cask, where you’re storing it, the climate in your area, if the barrel used or new, etc.

If this is your first infinity bottle project, maybe don’t go the cask route.

Tools to Add and Sample

Just like any other recipe, you want to manage your proportions. Make sure you have something to measure what you’re adding and what you’re sampling. You can use whatever you want here as well but I recommend using a typical jigger with 1 ounce on one end and 2 ounces on the other. You could also choose to use the smaller one with a half ounce on one side and an ounce on the other. In my opinion adding and sampling in 1 to 2 ounce increments makes the most sense considering the size of a typical bottle and it makes measuring additions with a jigger easy.

I sample from a Glencairn, for which the perfect pour is 1.5 ounces and keeps in line with the 1 to 2 ounce interval. This brings us to the next item you need, a glass to enjoy your sample. I recommend a tulip-shaped glass like a Glencairn for optimal whiskey nosing and exploration. Other tulip-shaped options are an official Kentucky Bourbon Trail glass or a brandy snifter. You can find other versions of the same idea. If you’re not into all that, a rocks glass works just fine. I would at least recommend a smaller glass so that your 1 to 2 ounce sample doesn’t get lost being spread across the bottom of a wide glass. You’ll risk getting no vapors to your nose and it’ll just taste generic. All your hard blending work will be for naught.

The third tool…a funnel. This one doesn’t really need an explanation. Don’t pour your whiskey everywhere trying to pour from your measurement vessel into a bottle. Use a funnel.

How do I plan my infinity bottle?

We’ll do this with the end goal in mind. Do you want to add and sample based on the developing flavor or nose direction by only adding whiskey that may add the flavor profile you’re trying to create? The overall question to ask yourself is “What kind of whiskey do I want to make?”. You can keep it as a bourbon blend so that you can still call it a bourbon. You can choose to only include single malts regardless of the country of origin. You can also just a some of every bottle you buy and just wing it to see how it goes. You can keep it going by just adding and sampling from the same bottle, a true infinity bottle as I mentioned earlier. You can stop once it’s full, drink it until it’s empty, and start over. You can stop once you’ve landed on a good flavor profile so that you can enjoy the whole bottle. Or just some of the bottle, and resume blending when you’re ready. That’s the best part of an infinity bottle. You’re the Master Blender of your own bottle. Have fun with it. Experiment. Explore.

What if I ruined it and it now tastes terrible?

Honestly, that’s almost guaranteed to happen at some point if you choose to pick up this adventure. That’s particularly true if you choose to wing it and just see how it goes. I’ve been there. Still worth it. I learned quite a bit about blending during that experience.

What did I do with it? I made Old Fashioneds. Make some whiskey sours, hot toddies, rusty nails, a boulevardier. Throw it in some apple cider (with a splash of lime if you’re a green apple type of person) in the fall and winter. Spike your egg nog at Christmas time. It’ll be good in something. Take the time to get good at some whiskey cocktails. You don't have to waste it unless it’s Canadian….kidding, mostly.

Some advice from the experienced

Let It Coalesce

When I want to sample my bottle, I typically wait until the next day after adding something new. If you taste it immediately, you'll get much you'll get different flavors than what it will be after the new whiskey and its flavors have time to disperse and marry with what is already in your bottle. So the real sample of the new addition's impact to your infinity bottle will be after at least a couple of hours. If it's a new bottle, have a dram of that on Day 1. Let it mingle and taste it blended on Day 2.

Islay Scotch

You may be tempted to add a little smokiness and briny flavors from an Islay Scotch like Ardbeg, Laphroig, or Lagavulin. If you do, add much less than you would any other whiskey, at least at first. Those flavors carry. An ounce can actually take over the whole bottle. I was successful adding a half ounce of an Islay to a blend on non-Islays. An ounce essentially erased all other flavors. If you’re blending Islays or want to do exactly what I just described, have at it.

Muted Flavor

Too many different kinds of whiskey in the same bottle blends to be generic. If you imagine every whiskey as a word cloud, imagine some of the smaller words (flavors) disappearing from each whiskey each time it’s blended. Some new flavors might be created or enhanced (enlarged in the word cloud) but more words disappear than are created or enhanced. Eventually, you’re left with the biggest common words like caramel or fruit. You won’t be able to distinguish if it’s a hard candy sugar or a specific fruit anymore. For this reason, I like to eventually drink the bottle down and essentially start over whether it’s from empty or leave 2 ounces behind to continue to be blended.

Log Your Experiment and Exploration

If you’re interested in learning how you got to the flavors you’ve achieved, track what whiskey you’ve added and how much of each as well as when and how much you’ve sampled. Adding 2 ounces of something to an infinity bottle with 6 ounces of whiskey already in it will have a different impact than adding it to a bottle with 12 ounces in it.

You can track it in a notebook or in a spreadsheet or the notes app on your phone. There’s also a couple of infinity bottle apps available for download. I’ve tried each of these and they’re all sufficient. The dedicated apps are pretty cool and can even do some calculations for you.

Although those methods work, there would eventually be a reason that I stopped tracking it in those ways. The notes app is not built for that kind of data entry. A spreadsheet on a computer or mobile device starts to get annoying. It’s tedious on a small screen and I don’t want to start up my laptop to add or even just view my spreadsheet. Frankly, I didn’t want a screen at all. It’s one thing that I’d do without having to put my face in a screen.

My preference was the tried-and-true notebook. But just like the notes app, it’s not structured for data entry unless I made it. My solution was to create a dedicated Infinity Bottle Log Book where you can list the distillery, the whiskey, and the amount added and/or sampled. Then I created a second version of the log book laid out in a way that helps you track and calculated the alcohol content in your infinity bottle. Both are available on Amazon for less than $10 each.

If you want to track and evaluate your tasting and nosing notes each time you sample and even jot down your initial thoughts on what type of whiskey and flavors you may want to add next, you can grab the Whiskey Meditations Journal. That’s under $10 too. As a bonus, the covers of both the Infinity Bottle Log Book and the Whiskey Meditations Journal pair well together and look good sitting on top the whiskey cabinet or on your home bar.

You can find links and a brief description of all three below the comments area of this page.