I’ve bought the same cheap but tasty brand of vodka for years and kept it in the freezer, but within the past six months it has partially frozen. This week it froze enough to not even pour, so I tried a new (equally cheap) brand. It has turned to a slushy as well. I know the solution is to buy a better quality vodka, but did something change to allow distributors to change the alcohol percentage in a product? This has never been a problem before.
Is it not 80 proof?
How cold is your freezer? I also buy cheap vodka and it never freezes in the freezer. Also what proof is your vodka? My cheap bottle says it’s 80 proof.
Perhaps someone (a child, perhaps?) is drinking your vodka and substituting water for it?
Interesting theory by Dewey Finn. We used to this in high school so our parents wouldn’t know we were stealing their booze. Any teenagers in the house should be prime suspects.
My first reaction to the thread title was “Yes, please!”
Now that I suspect that there have been nastly little teenager lips on the bottle, I’m not sure. I’m not completely uninterested, I just have reservations.
Incidentally, don’t try this with bourbon, scotch or any other darker colored drink. Anyone who appreciates their booze can tell by the lighter color even before they taste it being weaker.
I’m in. Gimme.
I have always intended to test a thing I read about in a book once. The main character was thrust into an alternate history, early 17th cenutry in technology, that did not have distillation. He was drinking something they called winter wine. Apparently big tubs of wine were set out to freeze and then the water ice that had seperated was thrown off, leaving a liquid that was higher in alcohol percentage.
My father told me that… An uncle, I think? Did that with hard cider. The cider was put out in a tub, a string or something in the tub for the ice to form around, and then the ice discarded. Homemade Applejack!
Just add a little pink lemonade and an umbrella and you’re good to go.
Slang is apple jack. It’s actually legal to do this according to ATF.
Distilling your own booze can be illegal depending on the State. But apple jacking to up the alcohol is legal. I am pretty sure the reason is that distillation process makes methyl (poisonous) alcohol at the beginning. You know, the kind of stuff that makes people go blind. :eek:
The freeze “distillation” method: first material to freeze is not the water, but a dilute solution of alcohol in water. What isn’t frozen has a higher alcohol content. Bascially, each time you partially freeze the booze, pour off what is left, discard the frozen bits, and it ups the alcohol for what is left. In other words, you are concentrating the higher alcohol non-frozen slush, and discarding the lower alcohol frozen slush. This process isn’t all that efficient, but the advantage is it ups the ethyl alcohol content without the risk of going blind. 
Fun fact, apple cider was by far the most common alcohol in colonial America. Pretty simple reason because all you had to do was press apples and let them ferment. There was a shortage of labor for a more intensive process needed to grown grain, malt the grain, to produce beer/distilled spirits.
How about a pink umbrella, like this?
Actually, the methanol is made as part of the fermentation, so it’s really a matter of concentration.
The primary reason distillation is restricted is because of tax reasons. If it’s done right, it’s actually lower in methanol than the original cider/beer/wine, because distillers throw out the heads, tails and foreshots. Most of the historical apprehension about going blind, etc… was due to a combination of sketchy still materials, including lead, etc… and adulteration with noxious stuff for cost saving reasons.
Freeze-distilled applejack basically takes all the ethanol, methanol, fusel alcohols, etc… and concentrates them. Reputedly nothing gives you a hangover like a freeze-distilled form of alcohol, since it’s higher in all the stuff that gives hangovers than anything else.
Nope, no teenager has access to my cheap vodka. This is an alcohol that has not changed in well over a decade - now it becomes a slushee. I wouldn’t mind so much if I could still pour it, but it has become too solid to pour. This is Platinum vodka, which I originally bought to infuse for gifts and found to be tasty enough to put into regular use.
Nice to know my dad- cough- or whatever relative he was talking about- wasnt breaking the law by making apple jack. I’ve always wanted to try it myself.
In Ohio, they used to sell some weird lower alcohol vodka at the grocery store, that stuff would turn into a slushy as my roommates and I learned a few times. You had to go to a liquor store to get the real vodka.
I’ve always kept my vodka (currently Titos) in the freezer and never had it freeze.
I wonder, if it sits still in the freezer for long enough, will the alcohol and water separate? What I’m thinking is that maybe the lighter alcohol sits at the very top, and when you do a little pour it’s taking a higher % alcohol and leaving behind some water. Eventually you have a half-bottle with lower alcohol content which freezes more easily.
How curious are you? You can buy a different vodka along with your next bottle of Platinum, and see if they both freeze, implying a change in your freezer. 80 proof alcohol will freeze at -16 F. Maybe the air flow in the fridge is blocked, so the compressor is running more to keep the fridge cold with a resultant dip in freezer temp? Or you can give the bottle to a friend to put in their freezer to see if it freezes there too. Or you can buy a hydrometer to check the proof of your Platinum vodka and confirm that it is actually 80 proof.
After ten years, it’s probably more likely that your freezer is running colder.
Stick a thermometer into the freezer and find out just how cold it is in there.