How to Make Vodka

One of the most popular drinks of all, Vodka never fails to lift spirits with it strong taste. It can be consumed neat as well as mixed with juices and other ingredients to make popular cocktails like Screwdriver, Greyhounds, Bloody Mary, etc. It sometimes becomes a bit difficult to go to a pub or a club to get your favorite vodka. Good news for all those who have enough time and patience with them! Vodka can be easily made at home, though it requires certain equipments, loads of patience and ample time. It is recommended that those who know how to distill alcoholic beverages should make vodka at home as improper distillation may cause irreversible damage to the health. If that is not the case, you must take help from a professional or an expert.

Easy Homemade Vodka Recipe

Cleanliness is of utmost importance while preparing vodka at home. Even a miniscule foreign particle can spoil the flavor of the vodka you are preparing. Clean your equipments with a mixture of water and bleach. Make sure every corner is carefully cleaned and thereafter dried.
Next, you need to produce a mash. Take your carbohydrates like sugar, potatoes, grain, etc. and convert them into alcohol molecules. It is best to consult a cook book for getting the exact proportion and ingredients for a particular type of vodka. For instance, to make a mash out of grain, mix it with purified or distilled water and heat it. Then add some yeast to it and let it settle (preferably one or two weeks). You need to use the best water while creating a mash, like distilled or purified.
Now comes the distillation process. Put the mash in the boiling chamber and start heating it. Due to the heat, the alcohol will evaporate and the vapors will move through the cooling tubes and get collected in the collection chamber. The key to get clearer and smoother vodka is by distilling it more than two times.
Remember to discard the first and the last 50 milliliters of the beverage you collect. This is supposed to be very bad alcohol and can cause some very serious health problems if ingested. It is also known to cause even blindness due to its toxicity. Don’t ever ingest the first or the last vodka.
The next step would be that of filtration. This process will remove the roughness of the vodka and make it smoother. Vodka is usually filtered through activated carbon filtration. Usually, high quality vodka goes through as many as seven filtrations. Take a funnel, place some cotton in the bottom and stick some activated carbon to it. Now slowly pour the distilled vodka through it, into a bottle. Repeat as many times as possible.
What you collect in the bottle is definitely filtered vodka but this vodka is very strong. Thus, dilution is necessary to make it fit for drinking. Take pure water or distilled water to dilute it in a ratio of 3:4. Your vodka is ready. For adding flavor, you can add fresh berries, peppers, horseradish, orange rind or vanilla bean to the vodka. Let it settle for some 10 days after which the vodka will acquire that flavor.

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