Is alcohol all the same regardless of what it is distilled from?

[Whack-a-Mole]

I read something that said alcohol (that we drink) is all the same. A colorless, odorless and tasteless liquid.

So, all the different types of alcohol we enjoy come from flavor that is added. Ok, “added” may be the wrong word since many alcohols have their flavor as part of the process but I think the point is that alcohol is all the same at the root of it. What it tastes like is something else you do to it or other things floating in the liquid.

So does this mean potatoes and juniper berries and wheat all make the same alcohol when fermented and it is just the other stuff we do to it that makes it vodka or gin or beer?

[PastTense]

The common alcoholic drinks are nowhere near 100% alcohol. So they have a lot more than alcohol and flavoring in them:

Alcohol by volume

[Riemann]

Colloquially, alcohol is often taken to mean ethanol. Ethanol is a specific unique compound, it’s the exact same principal active ingredient found in all alcoholic drinks, whatever the fermentation or distillation process. It’s what makes you drunk.

Chemically, however, an alcohol is any organic compound with a hydroxyl group. Small amounts of alcohols other than ethanol are produced in fermentation, see here:

Fusel alcohol

Excessive concentrations of some alcohols other than ethanol may cause off-flavors, sometimes described as “spicy”, “hot”, or “solvent-like”. Some beverages, such as rum, whisky (especially Bourbon), incompletely rectified vodka (e.g. Siwucha), and traditional ales and ciders, are expected to have relatively high concentrations of non-hazardous alcohols as part of their flavor profile. However, in other beverages, such as Korn, vodka, and lagers, the presence of alcohols other than ethanol is considered a fault.

The compounds involved are chiefly:
2-methyl-1-butanol - sometimes called “active” amyl alcohol
isoamyl alcohol (isopentanol)
isobutyl alcohol - one of the least toxic of the butanols.
n-propyl alcohol

Methanol is another alcohol that is highly toxic, and there have been many cases of fatal methanol poisoning. However, I think these are all situations where methanol was added accidentally or unscrupulously to cheap or illegal products. So far as I know, methanol cannot be accidentally produced in any fermentation process.

List of methanol poisoning incidents

[DavidwithanR]

The alcohol is the same alcohol. The “active ingredient”, if you will. Precisely the same. But it’s true that it forms only a percentage of the drink - from 3 or 4 percent for some beers up to near 95% for Everclear or similar product.

[Riemann]

@Riemann

So far as I know, methanol cannot be accidentally produced in any fermentation process.

I was wrong about this.

Methanol contamination in traditionally fermented alcoholic beverages: the...

Incidence of methanol contamination of traditionally fermented beverages is increasing globally resulting in the death of several persons. The source of methanol contamination has not been clearly established in most countries. While there were speculations that unscrupulous vendors might have deliberately spiked the beverages with methanol, it is more likely that the methanol might have been produced by contaminating microbes during traditional ethanol fermentation, which is often inoculated spontaneously by mixed microbes, with a potential to produce mixed alcohols.

[DSeid]

So yes, the ethanol in various alcoholic beverages is the same and the flavor profile differences between them comes from all the other stuff, stuff usually created by whatever the initial ingredients are and the specific fermentation and depending on the product distillation/aging processes.

Determining and understanding what those compounds are is serious science. Here is just a smidge of what goes into the profile of whisky. And tiny amounts of some of these go a very long way to changing the flavor experience.

[DavidwithanR]

An important note about “it’s all the same alcohol”:

This only refers to alcohol produced for drinking, under the right conditions and from appropriate raw materials. If (for example) you distill wood and bottle the alcohol component of it, you get methanol - a useful solvent but poisonous to drink.

(All the answers in this thread agree, just using different emphasis and different wording.)

[Horatio_Hellpop]

My personal experience is that a tequila hangover is very different from a whiskey hangover. I’m sure Absinthe earned its reputation, but my personal experiences with it are no different from my personal experiences with NyQuil.

[DesertDog]

@DavidwithanR

An important note about “it’s all the same alcohol”:

This only refers to alcohol produced for drinking, under the right conditions and from appropriate raw materials. If (for example) you distill wood and bottle the alcohol component of it, you get methanol - a useful solvent but poisonous to drink.

(All the answers in this thread agree, just using different emphasis and different wording.)

Well, there’s denatured alcohol which is ethanol but, thanks to tax-greedy governments has to be made unpalatable if not downright poisonous before you can buy it. However, even if I could tap into a batch destined to become, say, engine fuel, before it was ruined I’d be very leery of drinking it. Rather like I’d be leery of eating some dog jerky.

[pulykamell]

@Whack-a-Mole

I read something that said alcohol (that we drink) is all the same. A colorless, odorless and tasteless liquid.

So, all the different types of alcohol we enjoy come from flavor that is added. Ok, “added” may be the wrong word since many alcohols have their flavor as part of the process but I think the point is that alcohol is all the same at the root of it. What it tastes like is something else you do to it or other things floating in the liquid.

So does this mean potatoes and juniper berries and wheat all make the same alcohol when fermented and it is just the other stuff we do to it that makes it vodka or gin or beer?

The alcohol – ethanol – is the same, but the other stuff that comes along with it makes it different. Keep redistilling it until it’s as pure as you can get it, and you essentially have vodka. You don’t need to “add” anything to eau-de-vie or gin or tequila to make it taste as such. The distillate will have the flavors of whatever it is you’re distilling from unless you do your best to distill that flavor out. Then, of course, there’s stuff like aging in barrels, but I’m categorizing that under “other stuff we do to it.”

For example, when I worked a bit in the countryside of Croatia, every other family seemed to have a still. They would typically make slivovica (plum brandy/eau-de-vie). Just fermented fruit that’s distilled. At the end of the process, you’d get a clear, potent liquid that tasted the essence of Damson plums, but without the sweetness. You did not get something that tasted like vodka. Similarly, if you distilled fermented sour cherries or apricots or pear, you’d get the essence of those fruits. There was no confusing one for the other. The impurities, fusel alcohols, etc., all contribute to the flavor of the final distilled spirit… This is different than steeping fruit in the alcohol afterwards. (In Polish, there are actually two different endings for fruit brandies that are distilled and those that are just macerations of fruit in a neutral spirit. Sliwowica vs Sliwówka. The former is a distilled plum brandy. The latter is vodka or grain spirits steeped in plums, usually with a simple syrup added.)

[naita]

@Whack-a-Mole

So does this mean potatoes and juniper berries and wheat all make the same alcohol when fermented and it is just the other stuff we do to it that makes it vodka or gin or beer?

All of the fermentation creates the same ethanol/alcohol, but distillation, which you do to increase the alcohol content and water content doesn’t remove all of the potatoness, juniperiness or wheatness.

Or to put it another way: When you distill the fermented stuff to increase alcohol content, you aim for maximizing alcohol evaporation and minimizing evaporation of water and fusel alcohols. You get a lot of water regardless, which is good, since people generally don’t actually aim for everclear, and you also get a bunch of other potato, juniper or wheat specific chemicals, which makes things taste differently.