Spirit Infusion Calculator

Fruit flesh is mostly water, so its flavor compounds are far more diluted by weight than something concentrated like a vanilla bean, meaning you need proportionally much more fruit by weight to extract a comparable flavor intensity. Vanilla's compounds are concentrated in a small amount of pod material, so a little goes a long way even though it takes longer to fully release.

Both are scaled by the same intensity multiplier so the flavor concentration stays proportional rather than lopsided — using more ingredient without extending time would extract flavor unevenly, while extending time without adding more ingredient would just slowly deplete a fixed amount of flavor compound into the spirit. Scaling both together keeps the ratio between ingredient and steep time consistent with the standard recipe, just scaled up or down.

Treat the calculated days as a starting point to begin tasting, not a fixed deadline — actual extraction speed varies with ingredient freshness, how finely it's cut or crushed, and ambient temperature. Standard practice is to taste daily once you're near the calculated time and strain as soon as the flavor matches what you want, since letting some ingredients (especially bitter pith or seeds) sit too long can introduce unwanted off-flavors.

No — the ingredient type label is determined purely by which ingredient category you selected (vanilla, fruit, spice, or herb), independent of the intensity setting. Intensity only scales the weight and time calculated for whichever ingredient type you've chosen; it doesn't change what that ingredient is.