
How America Fell in Love with Vodka - coloneltcb
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-america-fell-in-love-with-vodka-smirnoff
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AdmiralAsshat
Vodka has a great many cooking applications as well. Most liquid "extracts"
like vanilla extract are just vanilla beans that have been left to soak in a
bottle of vodka for awhile. You could easily make your own that way.

The same method works for homemade liquers. Orange peel submerged in vodka for
a month will make a flavorful orange liquer. And vodka added to a simple syrup
(equal parts water and sugar boiled until the sugar dissolves) and coffee,
left to age, will make a yummy homemade Kahlua.

Vodka's versatility is its greatest strength.

~~~
dpark
Pure grain alcohol, such as Everclear, will generally do those jobs better. I
make limoncello with Everclear, which does a much better job of extracting
oils and flavors than regular vodka. And it does the job much faster,
especially if you have access to 190 proof. Of course you have to dilute down
to the proper strength when the extraction is complete.

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jotm
I don't get it, Everclear is literally vodka (pure grain alcohol), maybe a bit
stronger?

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harryh
Vodka is typically 40% ABV.

Everclear is sold in 75.5% ABV and 95% ABV varieties.

So, quite a bit stronger.

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jotm
Ah damn, missed the 1 in front of 90, 90 proof would be 45% :)

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microcolonel
Frankly I don't understand why grocery stores don't just sell undenatured
purified food-grade ethanol. There's plenty of supply, and if people could be
taught how to use it, there would be tonnes of demand. This isn't the 19th
century, we all have running water to mix our ethanol with if we want
"straight" vodka.

~~~
kornakiewicz
I do not know how it looks like in States, but in my home country (Poland)
it's quite easy to buy rectified spirit (90%+ ) in a normal grocery store for
cooking or so. But nobody uses it to produce vodka by mixing with tap water,
expect teens 20 years ago.

Never seen it in Spain though and definitely not in Finland, when I live now
and it's impossible to buy a wine after 8pm.

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umanwizard
> nobody uses it to produce vodka by mixing with tap water

Why not?

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c-smile
When you mix ethanol with water it gets heated up :
[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d859/b2900e6d66cf71d79601dd...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d859/b2900e6d66cf71d79601dd9c463c10ae9895.pdf)

Russian saying "The worst thing after drinking hot vodka is to have sex with
sweaty woman".

Yet, it was Dmitry Mendeleev (inventor of Periodic Table of Element) who
discovered that 40% mixture of ethanol and water is the best combination. It
is quite hard to achieve precise mixture ratio by hand.

Yet in USSR you could buy pure drinkable spirit, here is a label of the
bottle:
[http://incolorprint.ru/d/701905/d/1959_Спирт_Питьевой.jpg](http://incolorprint.ru/d/701905/d/1959_Спирт_Питьевой.jpg)

Used in cases when volume matters.

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m_mueller
I love how even famous Russian scientists live up to the stereotypes.

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pandaman
It's an often told story but I have not seen actual sources. Vodka had been
made to "polugar" ("полугар",literally "half-burn") measure long before
Mendeleev has been born. "Polugar" was a spirit, which could be burned down to
half of the volume (when heated almost to boiling, of course) and it's about
38% ABV. More plausible theory is that when the better methods of measuring
alcohol contents became available the standard had been set up to the "round"
40%.

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IgorPartola
Vodka is a terrible spirit in most respects. I am Ukrainian, but I buck the
stereotype. Ideal vodka is pure water with pure ethanol. That is as boring as
you can make a beverage.

In Ukraine we also had horilka, which is basically spiced vodka. This was not
some delicacy, but was historically done by necessity because the many
impurities in the vodka had to be masked by strong spice flavors.

Handcrafted artisanal vodka is about as much horse manure as “living water”.
Would you buy hand crafted artisanal gasonline for your car? Or high purity
electrons for your computer to run on? Again, if you can get to 40% ethanol,
60% water, you are good. Who cares how it was made, it’s an artificial
product.

(Ok some people probably would. After all, they buy $1000 gold cables for
their audio equipment.)

Personally, I prefer things with actual flavor. Like rum, scotch, or brandy.
More flavor is good.

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huhtenberg
Amen.

I can only add to this that you never drink vodka for taste. You drink it for
the effects. The only two qualities it must be judged on is 1) how quickly and
easily it goes down 2) how little hangover it results in. The less you have in
vodka the better it is on both points. Hence, comrade Igor's advice is a sound
one. Even if it sounds a bit alien.

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m_mueller
is hangover really depending on impurities? Ethanol it self goes through a
poisonous stage when broken down in our digestive system - isn‘t that what‘s
causing hangover?

~~~
chillacy
It can be made worse with impurities, especially those found in wine
[http://www.businessinsider.com/red-wine-worst-
hangovers-2016...](http://www.businessinsider.com/red-wine-worst-
hangovers-2016-8)

