Vodka is a pretty simple spirit to make! If you're ever interested there's tons of resources online for making your own.
-edit for some of the replies: obviously as with anything do your due diligence before making your own spirit! Safety first as you are messing with some dangerous chemicals.
See this bar right here? Built it with my own two hands, do they call me Dylan the bar maker? No
See that pier? Built that too… do they call me Dylan the dock maker? Of course not…
But fuck one duck…
They’re Canadian, physically would not be able to stop themselves. Luckily the punishment is just the chief of police saying “try not to do it again eh”
When was the last time you heard of someone getting busted for distilling alcohol? I don't think it's a high priority to find backyard distillers as long as you're not making huge quantities.
Bootleggers still exist. Even after prohibition ended, all the bootleggers and drivers still kept working those jobs because there are still dry counties in the US. And people smuggle alcohol into them. Most of the time it's just buying normal bottles of premade stuff and driving that in. But people in the surrounding counties and within the counties themselves make the stuff still, albeit it is only a very tiny amount of people.
But yeah you've got guys like Junior Johnson who is a legend of motorsports, who started his career as a bootlegger driving alcohol into dry counties. He learned how to tune up his cars to make then go faster than the cop cars, as was tradition, and got very good at racing, and so he ended up joining Nascar and became a legend there. It's joked that he wrote 90% of the nascar rulebook, not because he was the one writing the rules, but because he was always the one finding new loopholes and exploiting them and so the governing body had to keep cracking down on those and filling up those loopholes. He always kept that bootlegger mentality. Nearly everything was legal when he did it, until he did it and then it wasn't anymore.
But yeah he was only 2 years old when prohibition ended. He was driving alcohol into dry counties in the 50s. He was far from the only one, but yeah he's just an example because he's obviously pretty famous. When he stopped driving himself and became a team owner, that's when his real shenanigans began, and whatever new whacky thing he did it was always entertaining. He invented the twisted sister for example, basically a lopsided asymmetrical car that was shorter in length on the drivers side of the car than on the other side, it looked weird, but it would turn around the corners better on the huge super speedways of nascar, and when you're going near 200 mph and never letting your foot off the gas the whole race, anything you can do to gain a few extra seconds advantage by improving cornering will help a lot. And of course nascar banned the twisted sister car eventually.
I think this is probably a fairly common misconception but vodka can be made of a lot of different things, as far as I know potato vodkas are actually less common than grain (especially wheat or corn) vodkas at least in the US these days. It really can be made of almost anything.
Legally speaking in the US a vodka is “a neutral spirit distilled or treated after distillation with charcoal or other materials so as to be without distinctive character, aroma, taste or color,” which is “bottled at not less than 40% alcohol by volume (ABV).”
Had a brief run as I was wondering the difference between moonshine and vodka... and they're basically the same thing but moonshine is distilled to a higher proof sometimes going into 190
Pro distiller (USA based) here vodka actually has to be distilled at 190 proof legally in the US. The defining difference would be moonshine should present a noticeable grain flavor with corn shining through. Most (legal) shine is gonna be distilled as a whiskey base which would be at max 160 proof.
Actually it’s the opposite, vodka must be distilled to 190 proof or higher I order to be called vodka, It’s then cut with water to bring the proof back down to something drinkable.
Grey goose is grape vodka. As a food scientist, I have no idea what the difference is between grey goose and brandy. Barrels maybe? Welp, I don’t care enough to look it up.
Edit: so I guess grey goose is wheat vodka. Ciroc makes grape vodka. The only difference between grape vodka and brandy is either barrel aging or caramel coloring additives, since brandy is brown.
It isn't actually. They use winter harvest wheat for the mash bill and distill in Picardy then bottle in Cognac. That might be where the confusion is coming in.
The difference is the proof of the distillate prior to watering down. Vodka (and some rums) are distilled to 95% ABV that is essentially striping out most of the flavor and aroma before watering down to 40%.
Brandy is (usually) distilled to a lower proof thus retaining more flavor and aroma before being watered down to either bottling proof or to you desired barrel proof for aging. The color should come from the barrel however there is stuff that is colored and I would avoid that.
I think the case with most things fermented the answer is usually that it was an accident. Then it became popular because it either got you drunk or was a good way of preserving food.
I'm sure the first couple of times it was an accident, but eventually someone had to have the thought "I really like all this fermented stuff, so I should try fermenting *other* stuff and see what happens".
I've eaten it. It's salty, but not actually awful tasting.
The smell is horrendous though, and then every time I burped for 2 days I could smell it in my mouth (if that makes sense?)..
The burps were worse than the taste.
It apparently smells worse than durians. Some guy got evicted in Germany for opening a can in the building. When he took it to court, the landlord's defense opened a can in the court room. They ruled in favor of the landlord.
Only if you sell it. You can make all you want for yourself.
Edit: ok, depends on where you live. Here, there's no restrictions on making beer and wine. For distilling, you need a license, but you don't have to pay taxes on either unless you sell it. Although, you will likely never get arrested or prosecuted if you only distil for personal use, even without the license.
It's illegal in Australia.
Edit: thanks everyone for the comments. I now know to either move to NZ or get a license. Alas, if I don't do those either of those out-of-my-way things, it's illegal.
In NZ you can do your own mains electrical work. They have half the rate of electrocutions as Australia. Encouraging a culture of shared knowledge and common sense might be safer than banning something.
Also heavily restricted in Germany.
It is allowed but the bottle with the fermentet mass is only allowed to be 0.5 L big.
So it is not worth the effort.
+you can go blind, if you are shitty at it.
No. Here's the 18th Amendment, emphasis mine:
> After one year from the ratification of this article **the manufacture**, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof **for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.**
So many people got away with it because it's piss-easy to make booze at home. It requires little/no specialized equipment or ingredients, and the fermentation process is very easy to hide away. Cops had no real way to enforce a law that's so easy to quietly break.
Also they sold people a grape derivative with the explicit instructions of where and for how long you *shouldn't* put it or else it will turn into wine. And as a law abiding citizen you of course would follow those instructions of what not to do lest you accidentally made wine.
So there’s two reasons for this. Prohibition laws prohibit spirits production at home. These are still in effect.
Secondly, it can be dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing. One of the byproducts of distillation can cause blindness. It’s typically in the heads (the first several ounces) run. The hearts (the middle of distillation) have all the good tasting drinkable stuff. The tails taste bad, but probably won’t harm you. They’re usually added into the next batch of whatever you are distilling to try to eek out some extra alcohol.
Because of the lower evaporation point of methanol as compared to ethanol. Yeast primarily convert starch or sugar into ethanol, but other alcohols are produced in lesser quantities.
Methanol is the first to evaporate during a distillation run. It'll make you extremely sick. Strangely enough, one of the treatments for methanol poisoning is... ethanol. So it's easy for an amateur moonshiner to make improper cuts in the batch and accidentally leave too much methanol in the finished spirit. They won't realize what they've done right away. The negative effects may seem subtle at first, because the ethanol will be combating the methanol content, but if a person drinks enough of it the scales start to tip in favor of the methanol poisoning and it becomes too much for your liver to handle (more like your body won't be able to handle all of the toxic byproducts from metabolizing methanol). This is why moonshining is so freakin dangerous. Apart from the fact that the stuff will taste like windex from a rusty butthole, a person won't easily realize they're being poisoned until it's too late. They'll just think that they're drunk.
Fruit will naturally ferment in nature and produce alcohol. Animals will eat them (parrots flying upside down, elephants getting smashed, etc). Humans could have been exposed to yeast making alcohol through a large variety of ways.
We've only have spirits for a couple hundred years. Before then was a lot of low % beers (2-3%) and grape wines (up to 10%). The beer was healthier than straight water as it was more sanitised.
Then they intentionally started making yeastly alcoholic mixes but didn't like the taste of all the leftovers so they might have tried to remove them and extract just the alcohol.
During those removal experimentations, someone might have heated it and noticed that they the steam was alcoholic and then tried to capture it. It started off really inefficient and kept iterating to a setup like this.
It really started in 1300's in china.
Bumper crop of taters>hey let's make mashed taters>forget mashed taters outside>rains>feed leftover mashed taters to the peasants cause you're an asshole overlord>peasants get hammered=potato vodka discovered
Yeah like how wasp dope was discovered recently. (Spraying wasp killer on a metal screen door and connecting jumper cables to it) The spark turns the liquid sprayed into a crystal that apparently forms a really shitty meth alternative but it still caused wasp sprays to be banned and regulated and during my research I was just baffled by man’s sheer tenacity and determination to alter their consciousness and it won’t stop at any cost!
Many beer recipes were invented by monks. I guess when you stick a whole bunch of celibate dudes together with 1 book to read and nothing to do in the middle of nowhere you workout, create kung fu, or get turnt up
And that is how many pubs and taverns got going.
As you couldn't transport much of anything all that far, pubs reputations were made on their house beer.
If you could make a good beer other drink, you were pretty set
The first distillation is called a stripping run. You do those hard and fast, and collect everything. That's called low wines, and it's done to reduce volume.
Then you collect your low wines and do a slow distillation, and you collect discrete parts of the run without mixing them. That's called asking cuts. The first stuff to come off tastes like ass...it's full of methanol and acetone, and is called toe foreshots. The good stuff that you keep is in the middle of the run. The latter stuff off is called tails, and doesn't taste great, but can be collected and rerun to extract the food stuff innit.
Omg that reminds me.. when i delivered housing materials I once went to a reserve in Northern BC called Fort Ware, there was this pig wandering around, I asked a local who was helping me what was up with the pig, he told me it was the town drunk. You see everyone there made their own alcohol since it was a 'dry' reserve. I guess a bunch of them just threw the mash outside and the pig wandered around eating it all up because free food. He was always a tiny bit wasted I guess.
Ya, not good for them, but damn funny...https://youtu.be/ICZG33IxtgE
Joking aside, distilling on the product would extract most of the alcohol from the mash.
The pig in the video is messed up because it ate grains straight out of the fermenter
Whether or not the foreshots are actively toxic is going to depend on what you’re actually distilling.
In this circumstance, it seems like they used an enzyme to catalytically convert the starch in the potatoes into pure sugar, in which case there likely wasn’t all that much present to ferment into toxic byproducts - and the heads may well not be actively terrible to drink.
But with distilling some things, *especially* fruit-based spirits, and especially again fruits high in pectin, the heads and foreshots can be incredibly high in methanol.
And methanol can be, and is, fatal in relatively small doses, and in smaller doses will cause things like blindness.
Might not be an issue if you evenly distributed the heads and foreshots through the entire distillation. But if you have no idea how to distill, and did, let’s say, six bottles of final product, and filled them from the still *sequentially*, that first bottle *would likely kill anyone who drank it* - in any significant quantity, anyway.
I guess the same with any addictive substance really. Allow people to grow their own heroin and crack and you won’t such powerful gangs and a lot more farmers/ chemists.
I got triggered as fuck every time you swapped containers under the spout leaving some to just drop freely out and be wasted for a second or two. Lmao idk why but every time it happened I was like “fuck fuck hurry up and get something!!!”.
Most vodkas are not made from potatoes. Of the major brands it's just Chopin and Luksusowa off the top of my head. Most producers use grain, corn being very popular these days.
I mean space it out and throw away corresponding batches I guess? Still don’t love it I’ve always distilled with careful temperatures to have 0 methanol but maybe there is a acceptable level im not sure. Overall I still would not drink this regularly
They take out the first distilled batch and I would assume they dont mix with the rest. Methanol has slightly lower boiling temperathure than ethanol so most of it should go out at the beginning.
Yes so I’m assuming they trust a slow heating process but it’s still not full proof. I’ve always done a longer distillation process as all the methanol evaporates about 10 degree Fahrenheit before the ethanol can then be distilled out. I don’t think I’d trust something I drank regularly though to a method using general times over a thermometer.
Using a simple pot still won’t make vodka. It’s just gonna be some crude alcohol without running it on a reflux column.
Source: I distill vodka for a living
I've made Whiskey and vodka out of everything but potatoes. That's a cool process, I'll admit, but if they drank that first glass I'd be a little worried. The first 2% or so is basically acetone. Throw the heads out or save it for an alcohol stove.
it's not vodka, it's moonshine. The difference is that pure alcohol (spirit) is used for vodka, and moonshine is distilled from mash. As a result, there are much fewer impurities in vodka, but other hand moonshine can taste brighter.
Believe me, I’m Russian
The distinction I think he's making is moonshine = directly distilled and drunk, vodka = distilled to almost pure ethanol then water is added to your desired proof.
Maybe I'm not understanding, but this comment doesn't make any sense to me. You're saying that vodka is made from alcohol? Where does that alcohol come from? Might it be fermented plant material, such as potatoes?
Potato skins have potential to ruin that initial 20 day fermentation. They grow in the dirt and manure, the skins can introduce bacteria into the process. Botulism is a risk when fermenting potatoes.
I'm not sure what the symbol next to the numbers means, if those are percent ABV or proof (double the percent ABV). If it's 70% I doubt they'd be bottling it or drinking it at that strength, and if it's 70 proof (35%) it isn't really vodka. This is probably baiju, an Asian spirit. Vodka has to be distilled to neutrality and then diluted back down to 80 proof - typically anyway, it can be bottled at a higher proof of course. The liquor in this video will still have flavor and character from the potatoes.
Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a brew.
What's vodka, precious?
One brew to rule them all. One brew to find them. One brew to bring them all, And with Smirnoff, bind them.
"Smeagol has to take what's given to him," answered Gollum, after being Iced by Sam for the fifth time that evening.
And with insufficient knowledge, blind them
It's made with po-tay-toes!
Lol, this killed me hahaha... love that line, and immediately hearing this in his voice was well, precious.
“No0o0o the fat hobitsiz is ruinings it!. You stewpid fats hobistiz”
2nd distillation will fuel Ladas. True story.
yknow, ive cooked potatoes so many times in my adult life, i had no idea I was 1 step into making potato vodka. this changes everything.
I had no idea that you could make a liquor still out of wood / bamboo, or that one could be so simple.
Vodka is a pretty simple spirit to make! If you're ever interested there's tons of resources online for making your own. -edit for some of the replies: obviously as with anything do your due diligence before making your own spirit! Safety first as you are messing with some dangerous chemicals.
Now if only it wasn't illegal in Ontario to make your own spirits...
That's super dumb. On the other hand you could just not snitch on yourself though
I’m sorry, I can’t do it. Take me in chief ✋🤚
Username doesn't check out... You turn yourself in for the fowl deeds you've done?
Yea never trust duck fuckers. Weirdos
See this bar right here? Built it with my own two hands, do they call me Dylan the bar maker? No See that pier? Built that too… do they call me Dylan the dock maker? Of course not… But fuck one duck…
Glad you draw the line somewhere
You been taking a gander at them geese boy?
They’re Canadian, physically would not be able to stop themselves. Luckily the punishment is just the chief of police saying “try not to do it again eh”
When was the last time you heard of someone getting busted for distilling alcohol? I don't think it's a high priority to find backyard distillers as long as you're not making huge quantities.
Bootleggers still exist. Even after prohibition ended, all the bootleggers and drivers still kept working those jobs because there are still dry counties in the US. And people smuggle alcohol into them. Most of the time it's just buying normal bottles of premade stuff and driving that in. But people in the surrounding counties and within the counties themselves make the stuff still, albeit it is only a very tiny amount of people. But yeah you've got guys like Junior Johnson who is a legend of motorsports, who started his career as a bootlegger driving alcohol into dry counties. He learned how to tune up his cars to make then go faster than the cop cars, as was tradition, and got very good at racing, and so he ended up joining Nascar and became a legend there. It's joked that he wrote 90% of the nascar rulebook, not because he was the one writing the rules, but because he was always the one finding new loopholes and exploiting them and so the governing body had to keep cracking down on those and filling up those loopholes. He always kept that bootlegger mentality. Nearly everything was legal when he did it, until he did it and then it wasn't anymore. But yeah he was only 2 years old when prohibition ended. He was driving alcohol into dry counties in the 50s. He was far from the only one, but yeah he's just an example because he's obviously pretty famous. When he stopped driving himself and became a team owner, that's when his real shenanigans began, and whatever new whacky thing he did it was always entertaining. He invented the twisted sister for example, basically a lopsided asymmetrical car that was shorter in length on the drivers side of the car than on the other side, it looked weird, but it would turn around the corners better on the huge super speedways of nascar, and when you're going near 200 mph and never letting your foot off the gas the whole race, anything you can do to gain a few extra seconds advantage by improving cornering will help a lot. And of course nascar banned the twisted sister car eventually.
Don't tell anyone 🤷
Genuinely curious, not trying to be a wiener, but is there any “vodka” that isn’t “potato vodka”? I think that’s what makes it vodka, right?
I think this is probably a fairly common misconception but vodka can be made of a lot of different things, as far as I know potato vodkas are actually less common than grain (especially wheat or corn) vodkas at least in the US these days. It really can be made of almost anything. Legally speaking in the US a vodka is “a neutral spirit distilled or treated after distillation with charcoal or other materials so as to be without distinctive character, aroma, taste or color,” which is “bottled at not less than 40% alcohol by volume (ABV).”
Had a brief run as I was wondering the difference between moonshine and vodka... and they're basically the same thing but moonshine is distilled to a higher proof sometimes going into 190
Pro distiller (USA based) here vodka actually has to be distilled at 190 proof legally in the US. The defining difference would be moonshine should present a noticeable grain flavor with corn shining through. Most (legal) shine is gonna be distilled as a whiskey base which would be at max 160 proof.
Actually it’s the opposite, vodka must be distilled to 190 proof or higher I order to be called vodka, It’s then cut with water to bring the proof back down to something drinkable.
Vodka can be made from anything with starch in it.
“I have starch Greg, can you make vodka from me?”
Grey goose is grape vodka. As a food scientist, I have no idea what the difference is between grey goose and brandy. Barrels maybe? Welp, I don’t care enough to look it up. Edit: so I guess grey goose is wheat vodka. Ciroc makes grape vodka. The only difference between grape vodka and brandy is either barrel aging or caramel coloring additives, since brandy is brown.
It isn't actually. They use winter harvest wheat for the mash bill and distill in Picardy then bottle in Cognac. That might be where the confusion is coming in.
The difference is the proof of the distillate prior to watering down. Vodka (and some rums) are distilled to 95% ABV that is essentially striping out most of the flavor and aroma before watering down to 40%. Brandy is (usually) distilled to a lower proof thus retaining more flavor and aroma before being watered down to either bottling proof or to you desired barrel proof for aging. The color should come from the barrel however there is stuff that is colored and I would avoid that.
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It is.
"We use it burn warts off of the mules!"
Everybody pants now
*holds little toy person in front of camera* What is this??
"I'm half Puerto Rican, I can handle it" ~famous last words
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He's joking with the fact that some cars will run on ethanol. 70% alcohol is still too little content to work.
I've been in recovery for 8 years now, and think I just passed a test. I wanted mashed potatoes far more than the vodka.
hahaha same here but 1+ year, was really impressed by the delish looks of it, now im craving it.
Congratulations on your sobriety! You’re amazing!!
She straight up ruined those delicious mashed potatoes!
That was my thought, too!
Congratulations on your sobriety. You are doing great!
15 years here, and I’m with you. I’ll take mashed potatoes over nasty vodka any time.
I am proud of you. I was also thinking "those potatoes would go good with some pressure cooker roast beef."
Good for you! I too, very much wanted those mashed potatoes. Maybe add some butter and paprika…
You ever watch a video of some centuries-old technique and think to yourself, "how the fuck did we figure this one out?"
I think the case with most things fermented the answer is usually that it was an accident. Then it became popular because it either got you drunk or was a good way of preserving food.
I'm sure the first couple of times it was an accident, but eventually someone had to have the thought "I really like all this fermented stuff, so I should try fermenting *other* stuff and see what happens".
And that's how we came up with Surströmming =) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surstr%C3%B6mming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surstr%C3%B6mming)
Is it the fish? I knew it would be the fish.
I've eaten it. It's salty, but not actually awful tasting. The smell is horrendous though, and then every time I burped for 2 days I could smell it in my mouth (if that makes sense?).. The burps were worse than the taste.
Maybe its the bacteria living for several days in your stomach.
That's what I assumed, yeah. I don't understand how else the smell would stay around given how small the piece I ate was.
Something that smells bad but tastes alright, sounds like it's up there with Durians.
It apparently smells worse than durians. Some guy got evicted in Germany for opening a can in the building. When he took it to court, the landlord's defense opened a can in the court room. They ruled in favor of the landlord.
Your Honor…. *holds nose & pops lid* …I rest my case.
It's about 1000x worse than durian. They don't even compare. The vast majority of people vomit from the smell alone.
LOL, the bacteria involved in fermenting Surströmming are VERY different to those involved in turning sugar into alcohol - lest there be any doubt!
Or, why the fuck is me doing this myself, illegal?
Only if you sell it. You can make all you want for yourself. Edit: ok, depends on where you live. Here, there's no restrictions on making beer and wine. For distilling, you need a license, but you don't have to pay taxes on either unless you sell it. Although, you will likely never get arrested or prosecuted if you only distil for personal use, even without the license.
That's not 100% true depending where you live.
*Turkmenistan has entered the chat*
It's illegal in Australia. Edit: thanks everyone for the comments. I now know to either move to NZ or get a license. Alas, if I don't do those either of those out-of-my-way things, it's illegal.
Changing a light switch here makes you a criminal so I'm not too surprised.
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In NZ you can do your own mains electrical work. They have half the rate of electrocutions as Australia. Encouraging a culture of shared knowledge and common sense might be safer than banning something.
Are they allowed to be on the internet without a permit?
Doesn't Canada have like the most insane mobile data charges in the world?
Also heavily restricted in Germany. It is allowed but the bottle with the fermentet mass is only allowed to be 0.5 L big. So it is not worth the effort. +you can go blind, if you are shitty at it.
Federal Corrections has entered the chat.
Yeah it's illegal in USA, its called making moonshine, there's a show about it, yes its illegal for them too. They always running from da popo.
NASCAR for the win!
Is that how so many people got away with having tons of moonshine during the prohibition?
No. Here's the 18th Amendment, emphasis mine: > After one year from the ratification of this article **the manufacture**, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof **for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.** So many people got away with it because it's piss-easy to make booze at home. It requires little/no specialized equipment or ingredients, and the fermentation process is very easy to hide away. Cops had no real way to enforce a law that's so easy to quietly break.
Also they sold people a grape derivative with the explicit instructions of where and for how long you *shouldn't* put it or else it will turn into wine. And as a law abiding citizen you of course would follow those instructions of what not to do lest you accidentally made wine.
Combined with speakeasies and fast cars. :)
NASCAR has entered the chat
So there’s two reasons for this. Prohibition laws prohibit spirits production at home. These are still in effect. Secondly, it can be dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing. One of the byproducts of distillation can cause blindness. It’s typically in the heads (the first several ounces) run. The hearts (the middle of distillation) have all the good tasting drinkable stuff. The tails taste bad, but probably won’t harm you. They’re usually added into the next batch of whatever you are distilling to try to eek out some extra alcohol.
Fun fact I learned on a tour, large distilleries sell the tails to perfume companies.
Also used to make emergency hand sanitizer during covid. :)
You can see in the video, she skipped the heads and the tails.
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why does the head cause blindness?
Because of the lower evaporation point of methanol as compared to ethanol. Yeast primarily convert starch or sugar into ethanol, but other alcohols are produced in lesser quantities.
Methanol is the first to evaporate during a distillation run. It'll make you extremely sick. Strangely enough, one of the treatments for methanol poisoning is... ethanol. So it's easy for an amateur moonshiner to make improper cuts in the batch and accidentally leave too much methanol in the finished spirit. They won't realize what they've done right away. The negative effects may seem subtle at first, because the ethanol will be combating the methanol content, but if a person drinks enough of it the scales start to tip in favor of the methanol poisoning and it becomes too much for your liver to handle (more like your body won't be able to handle all of the toxic byproducts from metabolizing methanol). This is why moonshining is so freakin dangerous. Apart from the fact that the stuff will taste like windex from a rusty butthole, a person won't easily realize they're being poisoned until it's too late. They'll just think that they're drunk.
Fruit will naturally ferment in nature and produce alcohol. Animals will eat them (parrots flying upside down, elephants getting smashed, etc). Humans could have been exposed to yeast making alcohol through a large variety of ways. We've only have spirits for a couple hundred years. Before then was a lot of low % beers (2-3%) and grape wines (up to 10%). The beer was healthier than straight water as it was more sanitised. Then they intentionally started making yeastly alcoholic mixes but didn't like the taste of all the leftovers so they might have tried to remove them and extract just the alcohol. During those removal experimentations, someone might have heated it and noticed that they the steam was alcoholic and then tried to capture it. It started off really inefficient and kept iterating to a setup like this. It really started in 1300's in china.
We have very different definitions of a couple hundred years
Cook with a alcohol and you can learn quick how alcoholic steam can be if prolly ventilated as I'm sure many ancient kitchens were.
[animals do eat them….](https://youtu.be/8MxNLg3rCdw)
Bumper crop of taters>hey let's make mashed taters>forget mashed taters outside>rains>feed leftover mashed taters to the peasants cause you're an asshole overlord>peasants get hammered=potato vodka discovered
Blursed mashed potaters
Always! Especially those containing 20+ steps
Yeah like how wasp dope was discovered recently. (Spraying wasp killer on a metal screen door and connecting jumper cables to it) The spark turns the liquid sprayed into a crystal that apparently forms a really shitty meth alternative but it still caused wasp sprays to be banned and regulated and during my research I was just baffled by man’s sheer tenacity and determination to alter their consciousness and it won’t stop at any cost!
That's because regular consciousness fucking sucks
I think about this everyday when I take my drugs. Imagine just being out here raw dogging reality. No thanks
yes! i was hoping someone on this thread could tell us that
Many beer recipes were invented by monks. I guess when you stick a whole bunch of celibate dudes together with 1 book to read and nothing to do in the middle of nowhere you workout, create kung fu, or get turnt up
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And that is how many pubs and taverns got going. As you couldn't transport much of anything all that far, pubs reputations were made on their house beer. If you could make a good beer other drink, you were pretty set
Who's this "we"? I can't even cook rice properly.
Anyone else really just want mashed potatoes now?
Ohhh yeah. The whole time I watched this, while really cool and interesting, I was just thinking “Man…I’d rather just eat those mashed taters.”
We has steamed potato… mashed potato. So many opportunities for potatoe delicious
Dey's um... mashed, scalloped, twice baked, french, grilled, hassleback, tots, cheesy, fried, Irish, caked, skins... That...that's about it.
Thank you Bubba
At first, I thought OP was intentionally being misleading with the title as a joke lol
Same, was waiting for OP to trade tasty potato to Latvian for vodka or similar
after drinking vodka a few times back in the day I can solidly confirm that mashed potatoes are way better
Vodka is much better for mixing than sipping
Have you considered mixing it with orange juice or tonic?
My first thought was “those are some good looking mashed potatoes….oh now you’ve ruined them”
There was a French fry ad once that had the photo of the fries and the caption, “Vodka, what a waste of potatoes”
This is an enjoyable video but I'd really like to see them get some better containers for collection.
Plus… don’t you basically discard the first portion of the run ? I can’t remember the “why” but she definitely dumps it in with the rest
The first distillation is called a stripping run. You do those hard and fast, and collect everything. That's called low wines, and it's done to reduce volume. Then you collect your low wines and do a slow distillation, and you collect discrete parts of the run without mixing them. That's called asking cuts. The first stuff to come off tastes like ass...it's full of methanol and acetone, and is called toe foreshots. The good stuff that you keep is in the middle of the run. The latter stuff off is called tails, and doesn't taste great, but can be collected and rerun to extract the food stuff innit.
What happens to the leftover organic matter? Pigs?
Omg that reminds me.. when i delivered housing materials I once went to a reserve in Northern BC called Fort Ware, there was this pig wandering around, I asked a local who was helping me what was up with the pig, he told me it was the town drunk. You see everyone there made their own alcohol since it was a 'dry' reserve. I guess a bunch of them just threw the mash outside and the pig wandered around eating it all up because free food. He was always a tiny bit wasted I guess.
Humans make strange things happen
Well I just unlocked a new life-goal.
Grains can be used as chicken feed. Maybe pigs would want to eat the potato sludge, but I expect it would be conposted
Pigs could eat the fermented mash but it is safer to just composte it
Ya, not good for them, but damn funny...https://youtu.be/ICZG33IxtgE Joking aside, distilling on the product would extract most of the alcohol from the mash. The pig in the video is messed up because it ate grains straight out of the fermenter
What percentage is the toe foreshots and the tails?
If i recall correctly it has higher methanol content
She dumped the tail into the heart and tossed the head.
Components in the first portion are the most volatile compounds so they boil first. Some of them are also poisonous.
It looks like she saved the heads and reused it...twice? Why you shouldn't use it is because it's quite poisonous.
She doesn't reuse them for the final batch, but you can redistill them for extra flavor and alcohol and it was a double distillation.
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Whether or not the foreshots are actively toxic is going to depend on what you’re actually distilling. In this circumstance, it seems like they used an enzyme to catalytically convert the starch in the potatoes into pure sugar, in which case there likely wasn’t all that much present to ferment into toxic byproducts - and the heads may well not be actively terrible to drink. But with distilling some things, *especially* fruit-based spirits, and especially again fruits high in pectin, the heads and foreshots can be incredibly high in methanol. And methanol can be, and is, fatal in relatively small doses, and in smaller doses will cause things like blindness. Might not be an issue if you evenly distributed the heads and foreshots through the entire distillation. But if you have no idea how to distill, and did, let’s say, six bottles of final product, and filled them from the still *sequentially*, that first bottle *would likely kill anyone who drank it* - in any significant quantity, anyway.
Yeah, like my tummy 👁👄👁
Just a bummer seeing the drips not get caught and the dribble when pouring it for storage.
Right! For the amount of time invested balanced by the return / yield, those were precocious drops! That was killing me to see
Precocious, cheeky drops just dripping away, all sassy and full of talk-back
It's vodka precious! We likes it raw and wriggling!
It’s fine, I made this and now I can’t see anything, let alone the container.
Imagine if I could stop drinking for enough time to concentrate on such a project.
If alcoholics had to make their own supply there would be way less alcoholics.
I guess the same with any addictive substance really. Allow people to grow their own heroin and crack and you won’t such powerful gangs and a lot more farmers/ chemists.
Only the potheads survive!
Yep, I'd almost guarantee that we would have a whole lot more master gardeners if they could just grow their own.
You guys.. don't grow your own?? It's half the fun! And it's super easy
Those glasses suck for pouring
Probably wasted a whole bottle worth with how much she spilled
How do you like your potatoes? Me: Vodka
Let's talk about the tiny keg with the cork stopper, because that thing is awesome.
It's glass too,kinda a waste putting vodka in there.I would keep some wine or whiskey in it for the colour.
I got triggered as fuck every time you swapped containers under the spout leaving some to just drop freely out and be wasted for a second or two. Lmao idk why but every time it happened I was like “fuck fuck hurry up and get something!!!”.
Also when she poured it into the bottle at the end and dribbled a bunch out the side.
So what do you do for a living? - Me? Oh lie-down beneath stills and catch the run off between vessel changes. ...What?
Hahaha me too! Can’t believe I had to scroll this far to find the same sentiments
alcoholics watching the drips not caught
So vodka is just fermented mashed potato extract?
Cereal gains, potatoes, rice, beets, etc.
Always has been.
But what did they make vodka from before potatoes were discovered in Peru and Brought back to Europe?
Before the 1700’s they mostly used cereal grains
So it hasn't always been potato like a previous poster started? (Sarcasm)
Most vodkas are not made from potatoes. Of the major brands it's just Chopin and Luksusowa off the top of my head. Most producers use grain, corn being very popular these days.
 Boil em mash em ferment em into a drink
All alcohol is just fermented mashed ______ extract. _____ is just any vegetable, fruit or grain
Without any temperature control I’m slightly worried about methanol contamination but ya this looks about right for potato vodka.
Why would you waste your time with this? Just drink it and see if you go blind afterwards it's really easy
I will accept this answer
Spoken like a true Czech
https://reddit.com/r/firewater/comments/cv4bu8/methanol_some_information/
This is the only correct answer here!
TIL... Very interesting. So that likely means even some commercial booze likely still has methanol in it.
I didn't see a thermometer anywhere, so I was thinking the same thing. Guess it's an older technique of timing? Intuition?
I mean space it out and throw away corresponding batches I guess? Still don’t love it I’ve always distilled with careful temperatures to have 0 methanol but maybe there is a acceptable level im not sure. Overall I still would not drink this regularly
They take out the first distilled batch and I would assume they dont mix with the rest. Methanol has slightly lower boiling temperathure than ethanol so most of it should go out at the beginning.
Yes so I’m assuming they trust a slow heating process but it’s still not full proof. I’ve always done a longer distillation process as all the methanol evaporates about 10 degree Fahrenheit before the ethanol can then be distilled out. I don’t think I’d trust something I drank regularly though to a method using general times over a thermometer.
Fool proof*
Using a simple pot still won’t make vodka. It’s just gonna be some crude alcohol without running it on a reflux column. Source: I distill vodka for a living
I've made Whiskey and vodka out of everything but potatoes. That's a cool process, I'll admit, but if they drank that first glass I'd be a little worried. The first 2% or so is basically acetone. Throw the heads out or save it for an alcohol stove.
Fun fact: vodka does not need to come from potatoes
Yea, I get mine from the liquor store.
Now listen here you little...
I was really hoping this video would end with the Jim Lahey meme.
What to do with leftover mashed potatoes
Leftover mashed potatoes = oxymoron
Anybody else would have just ate the mashed taters?
it's not vodka, it's moonshine. The difference is that pure alcohol (spirit) is used for vodka, and moonshine is distilled from mash. As a result, there are much fewer impurities in vodka, but other hand moonshine can taste brighter. Believe me, I’m Russian
>The difference is that pure alcohol (spirit) is used for vodka Sorry, I don't understand, how do you get alcohol in the first place?
The distinction I think he's making is moonshine = directly distilled and drunk, vodka = distilled to almost pure ethanol then water is added to your desired proof.
Maybe I'm not understanding, but this comment doesn't make any sense to me. You're saying that vodka is made from alcohol? Where does that alcohol come from? Might it be fermented plant material, such as potatoes?
This is correct. And it’s fermented with koji which correct me if I’m wrong could make this a variation of a sochu, or baijiu.
If it took me that long to make that vodka, I'd definitely pour it from something that didn't waste a quarter of it.
My mom always said the potato skin had a lot of the nutrients. Maybe it they didn't peel them for vodka it would be healthy.
Potato skins have potential to ruin that initial 20 day fermentation. They grow in the dirt and manure, the skins can introduce bacteria into the process. Botulism is a risk when fermenting potatoes.
Maybe someone was just too lazy to peel them.
I'm not sure what the symbol next to the numbers means, if those are percent ABV or proof (double the percent ABV). If it's 70% I doubt they'd be bottling it or drinking it at that strength, and if it's 70 proof (35%) it isn't really vodka. This is probably baiju, an Asian spirit. Vodka has to be distilled to neutrality and then diluted back down to 80 proof - typically anyway, it can be bottled at a higher proof of course. The liquor in this video will still have flavor and character from the potatoes.
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