Experiment replication: vodka gummy bears

23 June 2010 by pat.

I never had gummy bears growing up, or even tasted them until today. The most exposure I had was from Nicole Vogelzang’s paintings and I loved the way they reflected and refracted light.

A few months ago, I read a blog posting about an experiment to create vodka-infused gummy bears. Cute.

Sandy was recently talking about jello shooters, and it put me in mind of the blog posting, so I decided to try to replicate the experiment, with a few variations: no worms, no fish; no sugar-free gummy bears in the bulk barn, so I’m using fruit juice ones; trying some wine gums, since it sounds to me like something that should work with alcohol. Also going to try some rum with fruit juice gummy bears, since rum seems to go with sweet things.

To start, I tried one of each of the gummy bears (wine gums I know). Interesting. Very sweet. Texture is chewy. Given the texture, though, I’d generally prefer to eat squid or cuttlefish sashimi

I laid out the four different containers.  From left to right, they are:

• wine gums
• large gummy bears
• small fruit juice gummy bears
• small fruit juice gummy bears

Aren’t they cute? I arranged the bears like they’re in a hot tub. But I didn’t realize until I was looking at the photos that the orange gummy bear in vodka’s upside down. Oops. Guess he had too much already.

Then I added vodka to the first three dishes, enough to submerge the gums. To the fourth dish, some white Bacardi rum.

Here are the photos. This is the wine gums. Am a bit concerned, because there seemed to be some dissolving of the gums immediately, resulting in some floaty stuff. We’ll see what happens.

 These are the large regular type of gummy bears. Look at the way the green feet seem to glow! Oh, I just love that. Does the fact I’ve submerged them mean I’ve drowned them? Oh dear.

 These are the little fruit juice gummy bears in vodka. As you can see, the orange one (on the right) is upside down.

 Here are six more fruit juice gummy bears, but this time they’re in Bacardi rum. Since rum is used as a base with so many fruity drinks, I thought it might be more interesting than vodka, which is neutral.

We’ll see what happens! I’ve covered the dishes with plastic wrap and put them in the fridge. I’ll keep my eyes open to see when it looks like they’ve absorbed as much alcohol as they are likely to. We’ll see what the experiment differences are:

• Do wine gums fare better than fishies?
• Do fruit juice gummy bears do as well as, better, or worse than sugar-free gummys? (I didn’t see any sugar free ones at bulk barn).
• What happens to the large size gummy bears? Do they muscle their way out of my fridge?

Stay tuned for the results!

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