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... =)"

Comments

Try the premium Pur brand

[pgpckt]

They should try it with the premium Brita Pur filters, not just the regular Brtia kind. Those are supposed to get out even more bad stuff, and perhaps in less passes? Maybe a three way test: Brita v. Regular Pur v. Super Pur.

http://www.purwater.com/yourwater/pitchers.shtml

activated carbon + alcohol beverage = water (?)

[Anonymous Coward]

activated carbon removes organics from water or any solute passed through/over it; that is a fact. a brita filter works mainly on this principle and not a 'physical' filter (like a hepa filter). a brita removes organic carbons (like ethanol), water 'hardness' (carbonate, calcite....) with resin pellets-an electron exchange, chlorine, some heavy metals and of course relatively large particulates (if you are using a brita to filter microbes you are in for some stomach trouble). last i checked ethanol is soluble in both water and gasoline (for example) because of its molecular structure (ie, it is technically an organic molecule but is soluble in water due to it's structure). which means, at least some of the ethanol will affix to the ativated carbon. therefore it should be noted that filtering the vodka would also reduce the alcohol content. i would be interested in an experiment that also tested the alcohol remaining in the vodka. it is quite possible that after 4 passes the carbon had reached it's capacity for adsorbing (not a typo) contaminants (ie ethanol). so long as 'smooth' was not confused with adjectives such as 'water-like' or 'pure', some alcohol probably remained but i do not think you could do this experiment without some reduction. depending on who you are any change in alcohol content might be considered significant! also, once a 'contaminant' is affixed to the carbon pretty much only a whole lot of heat+flame are the only things that would remove/recharge it.

i should also mention that if my typing is off it is because i did not filter my wine before i drank it tonight =)

Re:Better than a Volcano

[Z4rd0Z]

My old housemate Sasha from Moscow used to take a little ethanol from the lab every now and then. One time he made me a meal of mushrooms he'd gathered, which I was afraid to eat, and to drink there was ethanol diluted with a little water and flavored with a pinch of salt. "Too bad we don't have some glycerin to make it smooth" he lamented. He then told me about a friend back home who collected various liquids from the lab, and when there was enough he distilled them into a concoction. "The effect was very unusual", he added.

Re:Better than a Volcano

[nofx_3]

Everclear is great becuase it burn easliy which means... VAPOR SHOTS!!! Lite a shotglass of everclear on fire, then turn your palm so it faces the ground and shove the glass up onto your palm. The fire will burn up the oxygen and quickly burn out but the glass will stick to your hand, pretty neat party trick. Then you take the shot, and while the shotglass is still warm stick it back against your plam, wait a few seconds and the remaining alcohol coating the inside of the glass will vaporize, now take the vapor shot, the vapor will go straight to your head and really mess you up good, try it its fun.

-kaplanfx

Having done this

[icebattle]

I recently completed my first batch of home distilled vodka and, frankly, it was great. The yield was excellent, and my home made still worked fine. I even have some pics of the rig.

I ran half of the completed product through a carbon filter, and it seemd to improve the smoothness. Maybe. We had a few merry evenings with the stuff, and no nasty hangovers.

I'll be kicking off the next batch soon. Long live SuperYeast!

Re:no no no

[forevermore]

For those who don't know, Arak is the Israeli (and Lebanese and Syrian) word for the anise liquor known in Greece as Uozo and in Turkey as Raki. There are variations of this drink around the world (from South America to India), and though people may argue that one is better than the other, they're all basically the same idea (I hear that Syrian Arak is the best of the bunch). And I agree, much better than vodka. Especially for the science nerd in all of us as we marvel at the totally clear liquid turning milky white as the water from melting ice mixes with the alcoholic beverage.

Re:is usually spiked

[deglr6328]

Anhydrous ethanol used for industrial processes may be "spiked" (denatured) with methanol to discourage consumption but this is never the case with reagent grade "absolute" ethanol. When a chemist needs ethanol for an experiment and ONLY ethanol, that better be all that's in the bottle.

Absinthe

[ScottBob]

Especially for the science nerd in all of us as we marvel at the totally clear liquid turning milky white as the water from melting ice mixes with the alcoholic beverage.

And then there's Suisse La Bleue absinthe, which also turns milky white when mixed with water (the milky effect is called louche). Absinthe remains banned in the U.S. due to the persistent myth that the wormwood in absinthe is poisonous and causes hallucinations. It doesn't, wormwood is not, nor ever was on any DEA controlled substance list. It's banned by the FDA, which prohibits the manufacture, import and resale of any foodstuffs that contain wormwood in the U.S. The FDA hangs on to the myth that one of the chemicals in wormwood, called thujone, is bad, nevermind there is thujone in spices such as sage and tarragon. At least the European Union is forward thinking, because as of this year, absinthe is once again legal all across the European Union, with Switzerland and it's much sought after clear absinthe called Suisse La Bleue (once produced in clandestine labs) being the most recent to re-legalize. For more info, go see La Fee Verte Absinthe House.

Here in the U.S., available anise based pastis such as Pernod, Ricard, Herbsaint and Absente all exhibit the same louche effect (albeit green, due to coloring in the liqueur)when mixed with water. The colder the water, the more pronounced the milkiness.

Re:Better than a Volcano

[prockcore]

Everclear is great becuase it burn easliy which means... VAPOR SHOTS!!! Lite a shotglass of everclear on fire, then turn your palm so it faces the ground and shove the glass up onto your palm.

Here's an alternative that they actually serve at a bar. It's called a Flaming Waterfall.

Put a shot of Bacardi 151 and a shot of Sambuka into a brandy snifter.

Light on fire. Pour burning mixture into a pint glass, be sure to raise the snifter high enough so entire bar can see. Place snifter upside-down onto pint glass, putting out the fire.

Then lift up the snifter, inhale the fumes, and take the shot.

I'm sure many bars have their own version of this, but Malloneys in Tucson, AZ is where I've always had them.

Re:Speaking of filters...

[RedBear]

Just FYI, in case you ever go ocean trekking, you actually can buy a hand-operated desalination pump for your survival raft to make fresh water from saltwater. It's considerably more difficult than removing particulates, chemicals and bacteria from fresh water. I can't find a link to where you can actually order one, but I wouldn't be surprised if a desalination pump cost several hundred or even a couple grand. Requires some sort of reverse osmosis, I think.

I work for an organization that does marine safety training, and my boss related to me a story about a couple who survived something like 68 days in a liferaft in the middle of the ocean with nothing but a little food and a hand-operated desalinator. Not sure of the date but it was some years ago, so they've been around for a while.

Industrial Alcohol == Less Tax for UK Gov

[Dogtanian]

I love how out of puritanical fear that people will get drunk (and probably have sex) we put something that will instead make them blind or dead. What a country.

They do that in Britain too; although here it has a lot more to do with the fact that spirits are taxed to the gills... quote:-

"The excise tax today, literally today, on a 70 cl bottle of Sainsbury's vodka in Aberdeen is 84 per cent."

Needless to say, you don't get charged that if you pop over to B&Q for some luridly-coloured purple alcohol.

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[Thor Ablestar]

No. In Soviet Russia WE filter and drink everything that burns. And the Communist Party and Soviet Government try to stop us - mostly in vain.

Recipe 1. Take a long steel rod, cool it to the temperature -50 deg.C or below and let the purified liquid flow along it Every impurity will be frozen. Even the home freezer can produce up th 40% alcohol from the fermented potato without any distillation (Warning! Distillation was the legally prohibited action in Soviet times and freezing was not. Check your local laws).

Recipe 2. Add some potassium permanganate to the liquid. It will oxidize the most impurities and become a brown goo which can be filtered out. I dislike this method since it gives the bad metal taste. I prefer the more scientific method:

Recipe 3. Use the pressure cooker and about 1 meter of spiral made of copper tube (About 1 cm diameter is ok). There is also cyclone filter made of a glass can between cooker and spiral to catch unwanted foam and a thermometer in it. Connect it all with PVC tubes. Then:

Fill the cooker with a raw product, add some lime (CaO) and distil. Cool the spiral with running water. The theory is that the most impurities in a grain alcohol are ethers and they are converted by alkali to salts and alcohols, and alcohols smell alcohol and can be distilled off. Don't forget that the first 2-5 per cent of product must be discarded since they are mostly acetone, and the last parts must be discarded since they are water and the higher alcohols. The thermometer will help you find the correct proportion.

Then filter the product through the coal filter for water. Distil again. Filter through ANOTHER filter (Use the first filter for the next experiment:-) ). Distil again. You get 95% pure alcohol and may dissolve it to standard 40% if you want.

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James Bond

[frank249]

As noted byt the Accordian Guy, There are similar tricks with liquor. In the Ian Flemming novels, such as Moonraker James Bond had the habit of shaking pepper into his vodka shots. He'd picked it up from the Russians, who did it as a matter of safety rather than taste; the pepper dragged fusel oils left over from their crude distilling process down to the bottom of the glass.

For wine, apparently just decanting the whole bottle into another container improves the taste.

Re:It is probably to protect the company.

[MindStalker]

Seriously, drinking desalted urine is actually an acceptable method for dealing with a lack of water. And a bit of salt water isn't going to kill you unless you are already dehydrated. And these guys wern't planning on experimenting while dehydrated.

Re:Speaking of filters...

[mbourgon]

Ya know, I read this exact plan in an old Hardy Boys novel. That being said, I believe it said there was enough moisture in the sand to do this, and nothing about whizzing in the hole.

Re:Nope, was right, do your research

[say]

In Norway, quite a few people died recently from drinking illegal vodka, which turned out to be methanol. The guy who sold it got quite a few years in the slammer.

Re:Whiskey?

[The-Bus]

That, simply, is impossible. Good Vodka tastes good because it has very little impurities. The best are some of the "cleanest" vodkas.

Scotch, on the other hand, is all ABOUT the impurities. Witness something like the Laphroaig, which (and this is the producer talking) asks you to drink it and "release the pungent, earthy aroma of blue peat smoke" -- Macallan speaks of an "after taste of heavily toasted oak wood" in their 1971 30-yr old run -- clearly, they are not concerned with impurities. Some even produce "unchilfiltered" Scotch which has actual shards of Scotchy goodness floating around in the bottle.

That being said, some blended Scotch is OK, but not anything like single-malt. As much as I enjoy Scotch, I also like to drink JD and Crown Royal, which I'm sure means someone will take my Scotchy badge away from me.

Re:Ethanol

[DavidTC]

I said in biology. In general chemistry, obviously, you'd care if water got into your stuff.

In biology, though, ingesting water is pretty much completely ignored, just like injecting salt water into the blood is ignored. It has no effect, and it's not included in any calculations. You need to know the amount of alcohol, and, once you do, you couldn't care less about the amount of water.

I don't know what you mean by calling chemistry the 'real world'. When you're talking about the effects of alcohol on the body, you're talking biology. Is this some sort of scientific pissing contest I walked into? You don't explain reactions to alcohol with chemistry anymore than you explain circuit diagrams with quantum theory or bridges with the general theory of relativity. And in biology, water is not generally considered an impurity.

And I think it's obvious what I mean by impurities. Impurities in ethanol are things that aren't ethanol. (Or, explicitly stating something that doesn't really need to be stated in biology, water or air, or, heck, carbon dioxide.)

In general, though, when talking about impurities in alcohol, people are talking about the semi-toxic organic compounds that come with it, and are accidently created by the same thing that created the alcohol.

Instead of, oh, added coloring, which is not specific to alcohol, and thus doesn't have anything to do with hangovers, even though it is technically also an impurity. Vodka doesn't have any such additives, though. It's just alcohol. (And, for those playing along at home, water.)

(Ironically, this one of the few cases in biology where the water does matter, because not having any water would make the alcohol pull water out of you. So it is literally impossible to injest pure ethanol...even if you could get it in your mouth, it would have water in it by the time it hit your stomach by pulling it out of your throat. So, in a way, it's an anti-impurity...it's already there, and removing it will cause effects not expected by ethanol.)