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Hacking Vodka
enrico_suave writes "A group of geeks aimed to find out whether running cheap vodka through a brita water filter would make it drinkable. They claim after several passes through the filter the cheap vodka surpassed the premium Ketel One in drinkability tests. I think they should have done the test 'double blind' although drinking Vladmir Vodka probably could make you go blind anyways... =)"
How do you get $30 for one filter?
A three pack of filters is around $17.
Heck, the pitchers themselves are only around $10....
Seems like a good deal to me, especially if you could use the filter more than once (likely two times at least, if you only filter four passes, possibly three times or more).
Dude, that isn't a chick.
Actually, that, unlike most comments related to Soviet Russia, is actually pretty poignant. There was enough vodka per capita in the USSR that the drinker could be considered an impurity in the drink.
Na' Vodka's kids stuff. If you are really serious about drinking yourself blind, get yourself a nice bottle of ARAK, and drink it in one sitting. A good bottle will be up to and around 70-80% alcohol. It's big in the middle east. They drink it on the weekends, the rest of the time... it's Window cleaner.
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Wow, I would highly unrecommend drinking anhydrous alcohol, due to the benzine in it. Distillation alone will not remove all the water from the alcohol, so benzine is typically used to get rid of the rest (don't ask me how, I have no idea what the chemistry behind it is).
Benzine is an awful toxin and carcinogen...not so much something you want to ingest.
190 proof grain alcohol is pretty cheap...and you're really not gonna notice a difference, in either taste (they both taste like...burning) or in effect (that last 5% makes almost no difference).
You might want those taste buds later on in life anyway...
Spiked with Methanol,that is, which makes you go blind. One thing I know from working in Chemistry labs is that you should never touch alcohol coming from a lab. (If you don't believe me, squirt a bit into a Gas Chromatography column, and notice that there are two peaks, not one.)
The more you know, the more you know you don't know.
A company called gray kangaroo makes alcohol filters that do precisely what is being described here. Take this with a grain of salt, since the source is biased (they are trying to sell filters), but their FAQ claims the following:
How is the Gray Kangaroo different than a commercially available water filter?
GK uses more filter material than a standard personal water filter. It also uses filter material which is optimized for liquor. Water filters use a variety of filter materials, some of them improve liquor while others (which eliminate chlorine, lead and other hazards in tap water) do nothing for liquor and only waste space. Also some filters use plastics which are dissolved by hard liquor and end up making your drink taste like crazy glue. Most importantly the GK is designed to easily filter liquor multiple times and built to be rugged enough to be used by a group of heavy drinkers.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
What a wacky coincidence. I saw this experiment posted up on a message board and just tried it with some friends this evening. They left not 10 minutes ago.
Started off with a 750ml bottle of "Medallion Quality". You don't expect much from a bottle that large that costs in the range of $11 Canadian. Needless to say, it was putrid. Bordering undrinkable. You'd have to be drunk to start with to consume the stuff. Smells reminiscent of rubbing alcohol, tastes like turpentine with an aftertaste not unlike a bowling alley shoe. As my buddy described it, "It feels like a clown is raping my mouth."
We were sure to prime the filter first. It ships with some chemicals in the charcoal, so run a few pitchers of water through.
After 3 filters of the vodka, the odour was drastically reduced. Flavour was not hugely improved, but the aftertaste was lessened and it didn't burn as much going down.
6 filters, the odour is down even more. Taste is much improved. Now comparable to a decent cheap vodka, probably a little better than regular Smirnoff. Goes down not too bad, aftertaste still not great.
10 filters. Odour is near gone. Tastes smooth. Would be undetectable mixed with grapefruit juice.
20 filters. SMOOTH. Goes down like water. Zero odour. Perfect. Easily as good as an upper end vodka like Canadian Iceberg, but not as delicate as the really pricy brands. Definitely a good taste. Pleasant enough to drink straight without shooting it.
Of course we kept a control sample. I did not fully appreciate how good the 20-filtered drink was until I tasted the control sample again. It was truly terrible. While I suggest doing this just to try it, I will not again put that stuff in my mouth unfiltered.
I have heard mixed reports about how well different vodkas turn out. Some are better than others, Medallion had tremendous benefit from the filtering. The taste of the original and final product are not even remotely close.
Also heard complaints about murky vodka. Our first filter result was slightly murky and blue/greyish from chemicals left in the filter. Repeated filtering made it disappear again. I can't help but wonder if those chemicals were doing me any physical harm, but they could not possibly be doing any worse than the original vodka anyways. It's all in the name of SCIENCE!
All in all, this experiment was fun and definitely worth trying. It takes long enough that I wouldn't expect it to be a decent timesaving measure. However, it was fun to do and we will probably repeat the experiment again next Friday with that godawful Russian Prince vodka.
Methanol makes you go blind and very likely dead (unless you only drink a tiny amount and get treated immediately), Ethanol gives you a hangover.
HAND.
No, you can process methanol in the small amounts that you get it in liquor. Unfortuanetely, it metabolizes to formaldehyde and formic acid, which are among the major factors in hangovers.
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See, for example:
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http://www.talkaboutsupport.com/grou
it also depends on what vodka you are drinking. If it comes in a plastic bottle, expect to get sick. Good vodka is relatively free of the other little organic molecules that cause most of your problems.
Of course, if you're drinking enough of it then your problem is dehydration. If you have a pain in your side and/or your urine isn't colorless, then your probably need to drink more water, whether you've been drinking alcohol or not.
>your urine will be only about 5% water
Urine is almost entirely water, with a little bit of other substances dissolved in it. I doubt it's ever more than 5% solutes by weight, in 95% water.
INsigNIFICANT
If you wish to survive on urine you must evaporate the water off first.
Dig a large hole.
Piss in said hole or in a small container and place that in the hole.
Place a clean empty contain in the hole. Use this to collect your 'fresh' water.
Cover the hole with polythene; tranparent is best. Weigh it down at the corners to stop it falling in.
Place a small stone in the centre of the polythene to form an angle for the condenced water to run down. Your clean empty container should be under this.
Other green plants can be added to the hole to increase moisure.
I tried this 20 years during a hot sunny day in the UK - hardly desert conditions, I know. I had almost half a cup of water of drinking water at the end of the day. I was was not brave enough to try it without water purification tablets though.
It would buy you an extra day or so and better than drinking your own piss without doubt.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
No, by percentage of effect, its the impurities that give you the hangover.
Care to back that up? According to this ethanol causes dehydration, electrolyte imbalance and low blood sugar. Further, it states that pure ethanol can cause hangovers, and that it is unknown whether ethanol or the impurities have the greater effect.
That's why they are shooting for 100% pure, in theory no hangover...
Who is they? Care to back this up? You do realize that it's impossible to get 100% pure ethanol, right? Although one could probably produce 99.999% pure ethanol, as soon as the bottle was opened, it would begin absorbing water from the atmosphere until it reached the azeotropic composition, about 95% purity, if I remember correctly.