Know your vodka production process

Raw ingredients

Vodka is as clear as water and can be made from anything that contains starch or sugar. There are two important main ingredients that can not be kept from making vodka. One is water, the other is grain. These raw ingredients can be molasses and potatoes. But for the most part grain and molasses are used to make vodka.

The producers of premium brands are more commonly using grain as their favorite ingredient in making commercial vodka. There are several grain types that can be used. Among them are Rye, Maize, Barley and wheat.

Vodka is and can be produced from anything containing starch. This, will later convert into sugar and begin itīs fermentation, from which alcohol is a natural effect.

All vodkas (as mentioned above) can not be made without water and the quality of that water, determines the quality of the finished product and has, for that reason, a major impact on itīs taste. All spirits, including vodka, must be distilled from an already alcoholic batch.

The process

This basically means that the core ingredient undeniably has to be diluted/mixed with water and yeast, to be fermented. What youīll get out of the batch is about 8% ABV (alcohol by volume).

The batch continues on to the distillation process and is then distilled in something called stills. There are 3 main kinds of "stills" for making alcohol; Pot still, continuous still/(column/patent/coffee still) and a combination of the two.

Pot still:

Is a copper tank of sorts. You place your batch in the tank and proceed to heat it up. After the alcohol fume rises and sets on the walls of the copper pot still, they are then cooled down to transform into liquid again. The extracted alcohol is then gathered from the batch.

The pot still only allows for one single condensation at any given time. Pot stills do not make the purification/extraction/separation process better than that of the continuous still.

Continuous still:

Allows for the batch to be heated, cooled down and reheated in stages, extracting a purer and stronger concentrate of alcohol each time. This process is considered to be cheaper and of better quality since this does not require the still to be opened each time to replace the batch or empty the still for the next level of the distillation process.

Finally after many distillation procedures the batch reaches an alcohol level of 96% alcohol/volume.

Filtration

To filtrate the processed product, many vodka producers use active charcoal to filter the distilled liquid to get rid of bi-products and dangerous substances. Other filtration methods are available, but active charcoal is still the main process used to filter vodka.

After the filtration process, the product is blended with water to get the alcohol %/proof down to manageable levels, namely 40%, 80 proof.