Posted on 01/05/2014 12:24:09 AM PST by Slings and Arrows
Maximum alcohol achieved by distillation is a little over 95%, which is indeed what some Everclear is sold at. A lot of places require Everclear to contain no more than 75% or so alcohol.
My guess is that smoother tasting vodka actually contains more “impurities”, albeit of a controlled kind.
Fuel ethanol comes close to 100%, but at a very high engineering and energy cost. All of the “fusel oils” are returned to the fuel ethanol stream, as they make for acceptable fuel too.
Ya’ know, it could be your nose that’s aging. Just saying...
My preferences as to drink......
Meyers Rum
Two Buck Chuck wine (Charles Shaw)
Tocai or Lambrusco house wines from the pordenone province of Italy
Buffalo Trace Bourbon
Home brew honey ale beer
Guinness Stout properly “Gustungled”
Once in a awesome steak house called St Elmo’s in Indianapolis back in 86 we had a hundred dollar steak dinner an a shot of brandy that was kept under lock and key behind the bar and was 50$ a .......shot. 1986. I think it was a Courvoisier’s product. Our boss bought the four of us a shot. I would not have paid that for such.
Stay safe !!!
It is not at all controversial.
It is simply a matter of subjective taste preference.
Honestly....Jim Beam, Wild Turkey, Jack Daniels, Maker’s Mark, Canadian Club, Segram’s Seven, Segram’s VO, versus, some no-name distiller of whiskey. It all has a similar taste in basic form. It then becomes a matter of degree.
There isn’t much difference between a Picasso and a 5 year old’s refrigerator art except the price.
I can’t post what Popcorn Sutton’s footstone says but it’s brilliant. Wish I’d known him.
Radicchio is one of the most expensive salad green there is but tastes exactly the same as cheap escarole.
Mandrake, have you ever wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure grain alcohol? It's because I just want to get hammered without worrying about whether the phenols, pyrazines or other organic compounds are the right ones.
I just recently stumbled across Buffalo Trace Bourbon. Really good stuff at a decent price point.
1) One of the large producers for Safeway and Lucky stores simply add distilled water to that 95% alcohol to bring it down to 80 proof.
2) The owners of that company were my neighbors in San Jose, CA. One night we all got together with several vodka "experts" for a blind taste test. Can't remember all the brands we used against the Safeway, however there were at least 8 or 9. In every case they picked the $3.99 bottle as the winner. Don't know exactly why but my thoughts were that the Safeway brand had not been flavored in any way.
An interesting side note: That same company opened a new distribution center in San Francisco and produced a new brand called Skyy Vodka. Exact same blend as the $3.99 stuff.
I enjoy Kamchatka as much as any of the high ends.
Currently Brittany filters contain ion exchange media. This filters out the ethanol. Takes out about 25% per pass.
You have to use just activated charcoal to not pull out a large % of the ethanol.
One more objective difference between cheap and decent liquors is very important: the intensity of the hangover the next day, if you consume a lot.
I’ve noticed a difference between Cuervo and Patron in that respect. The better tequila doesn’t beat you up as badly.
I had some Potter’s brand tequila at a Halloween party years ago that made November 1st a very bad day indeed.
The next time you read Scientific American, count the sheer number of hootch ads.
The cleanest vodka available is New Amsterdam. It is also the cheapest. The other are not even close. New Amsterdam has 0 impurities and 0 additives except for purified water to cut it to 80 proof. Virtually all other vodkas have some type of flavor or anti-flavor additives to cut the burn and any undesired flavors or smells. In my neck of the woods you can find it for as low as $11.99 a fifth. The taste and the smell are the cleanest you will ever experience.
hehe
Fuel ethanol costs around $2.00-2.50 per GALLON to produce.
Add taxes around $25.00 per gallon for 95% alcohol for drinking and it’s easy to figure the bottom price for legal booze.
The idea that expensive vodka has some kind of expensive filtering that justifies the cost is just B.S. They may add something to the ethanol though.
The price of your booze should always be relative to your income. Acquiring a taste beyond your means can be a road to ruin!
These days, I tend towards microbrew beers or quality beers like Samuel Smith's Porter, Sam Adams or a Pilsner Urquell if I want something lighter and more thirst-quenching. I keep some top shelf scotch around like Glenfiddich and Johnnie Walker. As for wine, I stay around the $20-25 a bottle price range but rarely below $15.
On occasion I will have something more expensive but I think there are diminishing returns once you move up the price scale. While a $25 bottle of wine should be at least 10x better than the cheapest bottles in the store, a $100 bottle of wine might only be twice as good as that $25 bottle.
A couple years back I splurged and got Dom Perignon champagne for New Year's Eve. Set me back $90 a bottle. The next year I went back to Moet & Chandon ($30) because I just didn't think that Dom Perignon was three times better. Maybe 1.5 times better but definitely not 3x better.
Britta = Brittany
Damned autocorrect.
I understand that Everclear is almost 100% ethyl Alcohol, could this be used (obviously in smaller quantities) as a substitute for high dollar vodka? I’m assuming that it has had more impurities removed to distil it to this proof.
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All vodka starts off as near-100% ethanol, and is diluted with water to about 40% or so. As has been discussed, it’s the small amounts of impurities that give different vodkas their good or bad qualities. So, yes you can mix Everclear and water and make vodka. However, don’t expect it to taste great.
That’s it, metallic label that looks sort of like burnished copper.
I’m at the mercy of state-run liquor stores here, which limits availability. They’ve expanded their offerings considerably over the past decade or so, but there’s still a lack of the apparent variety offered in states that allow retailers to sell liquor. Wine and beer are all that’s available through retailers, and even that is limited by alcohol content.
This one, on the other hand...
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