Where did impurities in cheap vodka come from?

**I <3 Vodka** · June 29th, 2008, 11:19 PM

There's a cheap vodka called Oregon Springs bottled by "Royal Arms Brands" in San Jose and it says made from grain neutral spirits. It's so vile it's undrinkable, by itself, or mixed. So, I decided to do a bit of experiment with it.

It's an 80 proof vodka and I'd say comparable in grade to Potters, and such. The taste is absolutely vile.

The impurity is so obvious I can't even figure out how it even got past distillation. I'm not talking about low boiling component that is extremely difficult to separate from alcohol.

If you pour this cheap vodka into a glass bowl, then let the alcohol evaporate, the left over water tastes like battery acid. It's VERY strong tasting.

Try the same thing with a decent vodka, once the alcohol has evaporated away, the remaining liquid tastes just like water as it should.

Boil this foul tasting water down and you'll get a very viscous, syrupy liquid with a vile taste, which indicates that the nastiness is actually quite high boiling and stays behind water.

How the hell did this crap get past the distillation process seeing that it stays behind even after all the water is boiled off?

**Anthony** · June 30th, 2008, 07:37 PM

I have no idea, but it's interesting.

**I <3 Vodka** · June 30th, 2008, 08:52 PM

I'm trying this in a larger scale. I'm letting 350 ml (almost half a fifth) evaporate naturally until enough alcohol has evaporated to no longer be a fire hazard to boil it down on the stove top.

**danlhinz** · August 28th, 2008, 02:41 AM

The thing to remember about distillation is you can not completely separate miscible liquids. Even though the substance(s) have a higher boiling point than water some of the substance will be carried over with the water or alcohol if they are miscible. That's why you can not make alcohol at a concentration higher than 95%, at that point the water will not further separate from the alcohol using distillation. The only way to separate those substances is distill the alcohol more times, and/or start with mash that has a higher water content.

Other reasons for the large quantities of the substance may be from the fermentation process. Yeast can form other products when the pH, oxygen content, and nitrogen content are not right. The original mash used to create the vodka may have had greater impurities because of imbalance during the fermentation process. Also what was used to create the mash greatly effects the chemistry of the distillate.