I remember hearing from an alcohol-inclined friend of mine that vodka is just a solution calibrated to be 60 percent water 40 percent ethanol… That didn’t make much sense to me, since you can buy cheap vodka or expensive vodka, which doesn’t jive if it is exactly the same product.
So what is it? Is there some grain solids left over? What makes it taste better, or any hard liquor in general, taste better? And is there any liquor that is just a solution of ethanol and water?
I believe that there are taste differences because of other substances being added to the drink.
For example: Some beer companies put artificail flavoring into their beers.
Then again the percentage of alcohol comes in. Certainly if there’s more alcohol in something, the taste is altered. And there are different levels of alcohol in different brands of liquor.
Nyet, Comarade. Vodka is fermented potatoes. I don’t think anything is just alcohol mixed with water, save for solutions used in science labs. And those are all denatured, so they leave you sick instead of buzzed. Damn. 
Vodka is mostly water and ethanol, with fewer impurities than other liquors. It can be made from any starchy product. In the U.S., it is made mostly from corn, I believe, but in other parts of the world, it is made of potatoes, sugar beets, rye, or wheat. It is distilled to a higher proof than most liquors, which is what removes the impurities. Some vodkas are distilled two or three times to make it purer yet. This high-proof product (about 95% alcohol) is called neutral spirits. This is then watered down, and sometimes filtered through charcoal. Any flavor in the final product comes from the small amount of impurities in the neutral spirtits, or from impurities in the water added. Other liquors get a lot of their flavor from aging in fresh or charred wood barrels. Vodka is usually not aged.
Your friend has it exactly correct. Vodka is simply water mixed with pure ethanol. The ethanol can be obtained from any source since potato ethanol is not very common in the U.S. The solution does not have to be constant, it can be 80 proof or 100 proof. You have discovered one of the liquor manufacters most ingenious schemes, charging vast more more for a product in a prettier bottle. Take 100% ethanol, mix it with 100% water in any concentration and you have vodka. That is it.
[nitpick]
Except neither alcohol nor water can be denatured. You can denature proteins or, arguably, nucleic acids, but not small molecules. They don’t have tertiary structure. Carry on.
[/nitpick]
Denatured alcohol refers to solutions which are a high percentage of ethanol (usually in the neighborhood of 90 some percent) with a small amount of some other alcohol (generally methyl or isopropyl alcohol) added to make sure that some genius doesn’t water it down and drink it. Because you can’t drink it, it’s much cheaper than high percentage grain alcohol (everclear, etc). If you have some legit reason to need high percentage ethanol (eg you’re a labrotory that wants to extract some organic compound and yield a non-toxic product) you can petition the gov’t (i think) for a special liscence that entitles you to cheap chemical grade ethanol.
Too bad, I’m sure that many people would be all too happy to put down $10 for a gallon of ethanol.
That reminds me, when I worked in a neuroscience lab in college, we used jugs of pure ethanol to desicate brain specimens. I used to insist that we could dillute it with water and and have a party on the spot. My fellow students said that it would kill us. I said that it simply would be lab-grade vodka. Was I correct?
Much of the lab grade alcohol used in biochem labs at least is NOT denatured. It’s just good old 95% ethanol with 5% water. Like Everclear, it is best diluted about 2:1 to ~80 proof before drinking.
You’re right. Curse me. Curse me to hell!!
Wanders off, punching self in face
My Chemestry Prof told us(just in case we had any bad ideas) that any 98%+ ethanol would be extremely deadly since the process to get it close to pure introduced hexanes. He later said the 95% was safe to drink.
At what temperature will it freeze? It gets nice and slushy in my freezer (tastes great straight this way), but I can’t seem to make vodka ice cubes.
I don’t think any of you hit on the reason that there are such variations in price aside from the addition of some flavoring that is.
fusil oils are a byproduct of alchohol distilation and they do two things that people don’t generally like: They produce a bitter aftertaste that is mist noteable in vodka as a metallic flavor that causes most people to invoulintarily shrug or wince and 2: They cause worsen the effects of alchohol poisioning and make hangovers a real bitch.
The current cream of the crop as far as taste and price IMHO is Grey Goose vodka which is from France and twice distilled so as to remove the excess fusil oils. If you want flavored vodka then put flavor in it yourself because most flavored vodkas use crap flavoring and additives to stabilize them.
There is a really good Canadian whiskey that is double distilled too but I forgot the name, I’ll repost when I remember it. I’m not a whiskey drinker but this stuff is smoothe as hell.
Oh yeah, oak and other hardwood aged liquors lose the fusil oils naturally into the wood which is one reason why Napoleon brandy is better than EnJ (well that and they make EnJ with turpentine).
A few corrections, as usual.
Generic vodka is 40% w/v ethanol. Sugar distillate is 95.6% ethnol, the balance is water. 100% is called absolute ethanol, is very hydrophillic, i.e. it “attracts” water, must be stored under special conditions and by the time it’s poured into the vessel, becomes slightly diluted. Used very rarely in selected chemical labs.
“Grain” (wheat) alcohol is almost pure ethanol, used widely for vodka production. It contains less natural contaminants which give “flavor” to “potato” and other vodkas. Vodka by definition is never aged, but may be treated wih fruits or berries (“citron”, “cranberry”, “pepper”). For marketing purposes, vodka can be made 50% and even 55% w/v. Standard laboratory grade ethanol (e.g., from Fisher Scientific) can be drunk, straight or diluted.
Universities and other lisenced facilities can purchase it without the excise tax. It used to be denaturated, i.e. poisons and dyes were added, but still it was occasionally consumed, despite the scull and bones labels, blue-purple color and repugnant taste. So, the practice was eventually stopped. Illicit consumption nowadays either does not exist or is negligeble. I once heard that grain alcohol was on sale in a supermarket in MD. I never saw it myself, nor anyone has ever confirmed it.
Well, far be it for ME to know anything about alcohol innocent face ;), but…
Everyone is right…according to all the bartending sites on the web, vodka is just dilute neutral spirits. Hence, there SHOULDN’T be a difference between that cheap stuff made in Kentucky and Stolichnaya. But anyone who’s ever tasted both cheap vodka and top-shelf vodka can’t tell me that there’s no difference (and certainly anyone who’s consumed cheap vodka all night wouldn’t say that the next morning!!!)
However…the difference is that premium vodkas are made of grain (wheat, and on a higher scale rye), as well as more care in distillation (as the Grey Goose example shows). So, maybe I’m a bit of a sap holding out for Smirnoff, but I like to think I get what I pay for
I don’t know about vodka, but pure ethanol freezes at about minus 180ºF. I think I remember reading that vodka will freeze somewhere around 50 or 60 below Fahrenheit, but I could be wrong.
You may not want your vodka to get much colder than your freezer (about 0ºF probably). I have heard this story from several sources, but I can’t say if it’s true. It always sounded like a non-urban legend to me. It seems that newcomers to Alaska sometimes go out on a cold night to get away from it all and they take a bottle with them. The liquor won’t freeze because of the alcohol in it, but there’s nothing to keep the liquor from getting damn cold. They take a swig of it and instantly their throats freeze up and they suffocate to death. Again, it sounds like a non-urban legend to me, but I guess it could be true.
Bib, I could not resist, you seemed to me better than that. Why vodka would be liquid outside, in a bottle and instantaneously freeze in the 102 degreeF mouth?
I do not remember ethanol freezing temperature, but it’s low enough. The termometers are filled with ethanol, used in Antarctica. Vodka, being ~40% ethanol, will stay liquid till at least 50degrees F, may be lower. You can put it into your freezer and drink strait, better in one swallow.
Although 40%w/v ethanol is technically vodka and drinkable, expensive stuff is tastier. It is distilled from mixed grains, cleaned, treated, etc.
Real vodka fans can try getting hold of 70% ethanol and drink it (fast) while it burns. You have to know what you are doing, but the look, especially in a semi-dark room, is terrific!
Your prof was quite correct. In ethanol-water distillation, at around an 95% ethanol mixture, you need to either change the pressure or add other compounds to a achieve a greater purity of ethanol. The compound introduced is usually either hexane or benzene.
I wouldn’t say it’s safe to drink 95% ethanol; it will still likely contain the poisonous hexanes since the efficiency of separating ethanol-water mixtures through distillation decreases sharply at around 50% ethanol. The hexanes would likely be introduced far sooner than at the 95% ethanol fraction level. For some reason, 80% seems to pop into my head, although it has been awhile since I studied separation processes in college.
I would suspect that it isn’t the vodka that freezes, but the throat getting flash-frozen (or perhaps the drinker getting a terrible ice cream headache) from the super-cold beverage being swallowed.
How cold would the stuff have to be to pose a potential risk for immediate adverse hypothermic effects?
~~Baloo
Everclear is 95% alcohol, and I have drank that straight on many occasions. In fact, I seem to get less of a hangover from it.