Aw, y’all are just a bunch of lightweight virtual teetotalers! Sure, I drink martinis—but this cat mixes ’em with five parts grain alcohol, one part wood alcohol, shaken by the ghost of Hemingway himself, and garnished with a lit cherry bomb duct-taped to a live scorpion.
I’m not getting it.
Well, if we’re being pedantic, it’s Absolut. (And speaking of spirits unfit for human consumption…while I’m not a vodka drinker, that stuff is like rubbing alcohol to me. Give me Stoli or Luksusowa or Ketel 1. Although I’ve never gotten the point of drinking alcohol whose point is not to have any flavor except for alcohol. Yuck. Good point of this thread is I realized I just ran out of juniper berries, so I got an order on the way!)
Yeah. I don’t care for gin. But i understand the appeal of gin. It has an interesting and complex flavor. Vodka just smells like cleaning fluid.
(I had a summer job in a lab when i was in high school. Mostly, i ran assays. But i had to clean and rinse some of the glassware. And i rinsed it with 95% ethanol. Vodka really angels like cleaning fluid to me.)
Yes, of course. A stupid typo. I’ve been buying nothing but Absolut for years now. It used to be just your basic Smirnoff but when my big brother brought me a bottle of Absolut from the duty-free, I was converted. The difference is subtle, but very real!
Ah, I see that you’ve met my local liquor store’s super-cheap house brand.
Seriously, if I’m going to mix vodka with tomato juice, Worcestershire, Tabasco, celery salt, pepper, and lime juice, along with a pickled bean and/or a spiced olive, the the house brand works just fine. All the mix overwhelms the rubbing alcohol, but my drink still has a kick.
Okeydoke, but I get any whiskey that slips by you!
Heh heh heh, apparently the first thing most startup distilleries do is to buy industrial ethanol, distill it further and sell vodka until they can get some aged spirits to sell. So this is not so surprising.
And bleagh, gin tastes like hairspray. Vermouth could never improve it enough to make it drinkable.
I’m blessed to not having a discerning palate. This condition allows me to choose my distilled spirits by looking at the price on the shelf tag.
And returning to the subject of martinis, following is THE recipe (courtesy of Prof. Lehrer in the closing couplet of his anthem, Bright College Days):
Hearts full of Youth! Hearts full of Truth!
Six parts gin and one part vermouth!
One doesn’t fuck around with the classics.
Vodka is for when you like a drink, but you wish it were as bit more alcoholic. Like, you have some freshly squeezed orange juice, but you also want a bit of a buzz? Add some vodka!
Incidentally, there are three types of vodka: good, bad and overpriced. Good vodka doesn’t taste like anything, bad vodka tastes bad and is bad for you, and overpriced vodka tastes exactly like good vodka but costs a lot more.
Personally, I drink Finlandia because I like the bottle.
Sure, i get that. I don’t like getting drunk, so the open bottle i snagged leftover from my son’s wedding (he’s now divorced) is still in my cupboard. One of these days I’ll try using it to make pie crust. But buying a pretty bottle of vodka to use when you want to spike something that already tastes good makes sense. What i don’t get is drinking plain vodka.
(I think i must just react differently to alcohol than most people. I find if i get “tipsy” i become sleepy and antisocial, and want to sit by myself in a corner. This is obviously not the common subjective experience, or alcohol would not be served at parties. It would only be sold to dissolve medicines and flavorings. And perhaps to clean skin, or as a specialty item for technical gastronomy.)
Yeah, that I get. It’s the straight vodka (like what was drunk a lot in my family) I don’t. I mean, other than for the sole reason of getting buzzed (which, I suppose, is fine.) I’ve always liked my buzz with flavor. (And, I do admit, I lean towards really smokey whiskeys and really heavily botanical drinks like Campari, Fernet, chartreuse, Benedictine, Unterberg, Unicum, etc. Oh, and I’ve liked tequilas and various fruit brandies/eau-de-vies as well.) About the only thing I like vodka in is a bloody Mary or Caesar (preferred. I will fight all you Clamato haters.) And I do agree with good vodka, cheap vodka, expensive vodka classifications. The stuff I considered “good,” has always been budget friendly. The Luksusowa potato vodka I mentioned before is like $20 a handle. Tanquerey – known for their gin – also had an affordable vodka called Tanquerey Silver that was a steal and went down well (okay, there was a period of time about thirty years back that I hated gin and began my drinking career on vodka before I discovered the wide world of spirits with flavor.)
I’m a fan. Pie crust needs to be perfect. Vodka is a great alternative to water in a recipe as most of it evapourates, leaving a nice crisp crust.
I mean, like, I have already splashed out on a rabbit, deboned it and made my stew with Guinness and red wine. That’s a lot of work. I am not leaving my pastry to chance.
Also… after using most of a bottle of red wine to make the stew, I probably have run out of booze… except the vodka.
If by “straight” you mean straight up – literally just vodka poured into a glass – I don’t get that either. But if you add ice – the rule chez Wolfpup is four ice cubes – it both chills and dilutes the vodka. Whether or not you add vermouth (I don’t) or a couple of olives, in my world this is a martini, but mercifully lacking the stench of gin. The idea that vodka has no taste is a myth. Of course it has a taste, or it wouldn’t be used as an ingredient in a popular type of pasta sauce.
I’m counting rocks as “straight” in the sense there is no other flavor added, not in the bartending definition.
In pasta sauce it is added to extract extra flavors from tomatoes, not a flavoring on its own.
Its role there is to inhibit gluten development while providing enough moisture to compose a dough. Too much gluten development and you get a more rigid and stiff crust as opposed to the tender flaky one. Gluten development is good for bread, not so much for crust.
Thank you. I bake bread too. I inherited that vodka trick via word-of-mouth, my mother, who is far from a scientist.
I will go bury myself in a rabbithole of gluten/non-gluten prep methods..
You might as well call it a screwdriver, without orange juice. Or a Black Russian, without coffee liqueur. Or a vodka tonic, without the tonic.
Size and shape of the ice cubes, please?
ThelmaLou is taking notes. 
I agree with this. Adding ice does not turn liquer into a cocktail.
I say a similar thing along the lines of “just because it’s served in a martini glass, doesn’t make it a martini” for all the frou-frou “martinis” that have come along. (Though wolfpup doesn’t even serve it in one of those. Like there is literally nothing identifiable as a martini with that drink. It doesn’t even pretend to be a martini by being served in a martini glass.)