Pod Insights The Sporkful Are All Vodkas The Same? (Reheat) About this episode Is there really a difference between cheap and expensive vodkas? In this collaboration with NPR's Planet Money, we go on a mission to learn how super premium vodka is made and marketed. Then we make our own, to see how it measures up.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Dan Pashman? My whole extended family and I went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina this past spring. And I gotta say, I came away feeling like, number one, this is a great family destination. Number two, this is a great place to come all year round. The mini golf alone is probably worth it. It's like the mini golf capital of the country. They have the most incredible elaborate mini golf courses. They also have more than 80 championship, full-size golf courses, plus 60 miles of beautiful coastline, all-season sunshine. Of course, you can relax by the beach or the pool. There's also jet skiing, fishing charters, paddle boarding, and of course, food. Oh, man, did we eat well in Myrtle Beach. From fresh local seafood to craft burgers and craft beers to kebabs on the boardwalk. With more than 2,000 restaurants to choose from, from legendary no-frills seafood shacks to chef-driven dining,
0:45 Dan Pashman? Myrtle Beach has it all. Plus, live entertainment at the beach. There's always something epic going on. So, summer may be winding down, but in Myrtle Beach, you're gonna find the coastal vacation of your dreams all year long. Start planning your ultimate beach vacation at visitmyrtlebeach.com. I grew up on Lando Lakes cheese. I still remember going to the supermarket deli counter with my mom and her ordering Lando Lakes American cheese. And now, Lando Lakes cheese and butter are a huge part of my home. There are so many easy weeknight recipes using Lando Lakes cheese and butter that bring delicious restaurant taste right to your table. From chicken parm to weeknight shrimp pad Thai, Lando Lakes has plenty of quick dishes that'll have the whole dinner table talking. Visit landolakes.com/reцепes/collection for easy weeknight dinners.
1:32 Dan Pashman? Hey there, Dan here with another Sporkful reheat for you. This week, we're sharing a special collaboration we did a little while back with our friends at the NPR podcast Planet Money. I teamed up with my old pal Alex Goldmark for this episode. Trust me, you're gonna walk away from this one knowing a lot more about vodka than when you started. And if you think that this entire episode was an elaborate ruse for Alex and I to drink vodka and charge it to NPR, well, I just wanna remind you that there's an old episode of the Sporkful you want us to pull out of the deep freezer. Let us know by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected] . Be sure to include your first name, your location, what episode you want us to hear, and why. Now, a quick note before we get into this episode. Industry City Distillery, which you hear in this episode featured, has closed since the episode aired. But I think
2:16 Dan Pashman? you're gonna enjoy it. Pour yourself a drink and enjoy.
2:21 Dan Pashman? Quick heads up, there is a little bit of explicit language in this episode.
2:27 Dan Pashman? A while back, I went to a bar called O'Keefe's. It's a standard Irish bar in Brooklyn. I was there with my friend Alex Goldmark.
2:33 Speaker 01 Former friend, because you basically picked an argument with me.
2:37 Dan Pashman? Yeah, you're right.
2:39 Speaker 01 I am telling you, it is a real thing that happens just about every time.
2:43 Dan Pashman? So, so wait. You're telling me when you drink cheap vodka, you have an allergic reaction, but when you drink expensive vodka, you're fine?
2:51 Speaker 01 I am allergic to cheap vodka. That is my claim. When I drink cheap vodka, my face turns red. It gets a little hard to breathe, like just a little. It's not like it's gonna kill me.
3:00 Dan Pashman? I don't buy it.
3:02 Speaker 01 You doubted my own personal claims about my own personal health?
3:07 Dan Pashman? Yeah, I know, Alex. Look, no offense, but I'm just really skeptical. I mean, vodkas are pretty much all the same. In fact, I think they have to be. And anyone who insists otherwise is falling for one of the great sales jobs of all time.
3:24 Dan Pashman? This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. Now, to the task at hand, and I'm very excited, because I have a co-host today, my old friend Alex Goldmark from Planet Money. Hey, Alex.
3:39 Speaker 01 It's an honor to be here.
3:41 Dan Pashman? So, we go back, Alex. I was actually counting the years. We've worked together at so many different jobs, I've lost count of that, but I know that we worked together in 2004.
3:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, two different radio stations, one of which is already completely out of business. And we've had our share of after-work drinks together, which is why I brought my whole little red-cheek issue to you, only to be shut down.
4:02 Dan Pashman? That's right. So, we have a long history together. We have a history of drinking together. But let's not get too warm and fuzzy here, Alex, because we do have to maintain a...
4:11 Speaker 01 Journalistic rigor?
4:12 Dan Pashman? I was gonna say pretend-heated rivalry.
4:17 Dan Pashman? Speaking of which.
4:21 Dan Pashman? Here it is, Alex. That's an authentic paper sound effect, which means I'm about to read a law to you. Bring it on. This is Title 27, Section 5.22 of the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Code. This is the code, Alex, that aspiring vodka magnates read to their children at bedtime. Sounds very intimidating. It says that vodka must be distilled or treated until it is, quote, "without distinctive character, aroma, taste, or color." Okay, but vodka has a taste. But it has no distinctive taste. Okay, go on. Like, if you're making bourbon, you're going crazy trying to create a unique flavor so that your product will stand out, right? Like, you're gonna age it in certain barrels for a certain amount of time or whatever.
5:03 Dan Pashman? Right, and that's how it is, smoky, or peaty, or other ones that I actually don't know. Exactly. But I've heard. Right, right. But if you're making vodka, there's very little you're allowed to do to make it taste different. Okay. If you add sugar, or fruit, or something, then it becomes flavored vodka, which the law puts in a whole other category that's not traditional vodka. It's essentially pure alcohol with just enough water added that it doesn't kill you. The word vodka comes from the Russian and Polish words for water, and the law today reflects that history. So to call something vodka, you have to make an industrial-grade pure alcohol first, like the stuff you would put in adhesives, or fragrances, or detergents. And then, take that, and all you do is add water, and you got vodka.
5:47 Dan Pashman? That, uh, that doesn't sound right. All right, look, to figure out if there's a difference between fancy and cheap vodka, let's just start off by finding someone to show us how vodka is made. Makes sense. All right? Someone who can show us how it all works, standing right in front of their vodka-making machines.
6:05 Speaker 01 Hey there.
6:05 Dan Pashman? Hey, how are you?
6:06 Speaker 01 Good. How's it going? Good.
6:08 Dan Pashman? This is Ronak Perik. He's one of the guys who runs Industry City Distillery in Brooklyn. The company got an unlikely start when its founder was doing an experiment with aquaponics. Aquaponics is a system where you raise fish in tanks and use their waste to feed plants you're growing in the water.
6:24 Speaker 02 And if you imagine plant life living in animal, or with fish life, what you need to do is you introduce this carbon dioxide artificially to that system. So we looked at natural ways to find CO2. One of those ways that you find CO2 is fermentation. The other product of fermentation was alcohol. Okay, well, what can you do with the alcohol? The alcohol kind of became its own business.
6:44 Speaker 01 You're the founder of this company was just playing with aquaponics for fun and accidentally made vodka?
6:49 Speaker 02 Accidentally came across alcohol and spirits and looked at various ways of monetizing as this spirit that was coming off was really damn tasty.
6:57 Dan Pashman? In those early heady aquaponics days, Ronak hadn't joined Industry City yet. He was in business school and he had his own side project.
7:05 Speaker 02 We had a copper still, working off of a stove. We were making, a friend of mine were making gins.
7:10 Speaker 01 And you just made gin like for fun for your friends?
7:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. They were great, just little things I like to experiment with, making various flavors. I think long-term, I wanted to get into the business of making a brand, making alcohol. But at that time, it was just kind of recipe building and flavor creations, which is really fun.
7:28 Dan Pashman? Eventually, Ronak came to Industry City Distillery and now he's living the dream.
7:32 Speaker 01 He takes us down a long cluttered hallway, past a bar, and then unlocks this big metal door.
7:38 Speaker 02 You're entering our still room now.
7:39 Speaker 01 There's like clear jugs all around. There's this one machine that looks kind of like where you'd go to flip a circuit breaker to turn the power back on with some tubes coming out of it. Another one looks like an angry washing machine. And the whole room is kind of cramped, smaller than a dorm room.
7:54 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, there's like enough room for maybe two or three people to be working, basically. That's it.
7:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, which is about our team.
8:00 Dan Pashman? So Ronak explained how to make vodka in a nutshell. First off, don't make it in a nutshell, because that's very small. It's really straightforward science. You combine sugar and yeast. The yeast eats the sugar and poops out alcohol.
8:13 Speaker 02 Pooping alcohol.
8:14 Dan Pashman? It's poops, right. So it's the yeast waste product is what makes us drunk. Did you know that, Alex?
8:19 Speaker 01 That's news to me.
8:20 Speaker 02 One man's trash is another man's treasure.
8:22 Dan Pashman? That's right. So when you get drunk, you're essentially poisoning yourself with yeast poop to forget about your problems.
8:27 Speaker 02 There you go.
8:28 Dan Pashman? And when it comes to what sugars you can use, the yeast isn't picky. Neither are the standards for vodka. Like, for instance, Alex, tequila has to be made with agave for it to be tequila. Whiskey has to be made with corn or grain. But with vodka?
8:42 Speaker 02 Really, anything can make vodka.
8:44 Dan Pashman? Sugar, exactly.
8:45 Speaker 02 A Kit Kat?
8:46 Dan Pashman? Kit Kat, Kit Kat has sugar in it. I can ferment it and therefore distill it. So after fermentation, you've got this vat of alcohol, but it's also filled with the leftover raw materials, the sugar and yeast and junk. You've got to separate the alcohol. So you heat the mixture just to the point where the alcohol turns to steam and rises up.
9:04 Speaker 01 So it goes up.
9:05 Speaker 02 It rises like a gas up, and there's a condenser coil at the top there that's filled with cold water. That's going to condense it back down to a liquor. Remember, we're dealing with vapors. We're dealing with gases. I've got to get that back to a liquid state in order to make it potable, so you can forget about your problems.
9:18 Dan Pashman? You do that a few times, and you end up with basically pure alcohol. And every vodka, Alex, no matter how cheap, has to be distilled to that point.
9:27 Speaker 01 So these machines here, the main purpose of them is to remove flavor and scent and any other characteristic except for alcohol.
9:37 Speaker 02 Exactly. Now, chemical constituents of alcohol, esters, they will create flavors. But in the case of vodka, they will not be related to its raw material. By definition, that is the case. So if you ever see packaging that states, "Ah, this vodka's made with Northwest Pacific grains kissed by the Colorado Rapids", that's all marketing bullshit. When it comes to vodka, your raw material cannot influence final flavor.
10:01 Dan Pashman? Ronak, are you ready for the lightning round?
10:03 Speaker 02 Sure.
10:03 Dan Pashman? I'm going to say a claim, a term, that I've seen on a vodka, not yours, and I want you to tell me what it means and whether it actually makes a difference.
10:12 Speaker 02 Okay, I like this.
10:13 Dan Pashman? All right, here we go. Filtered through champagne limestone. That sounds fancy.
10:20 Speaker 02 That does sound fancy, doesn't it? That really... Now, what the heck does filtering to through... What is champagne limestone versus limestone? Be my first question. And then I'd also ask, what type of chemical reaction is happening when you filter through limestone? I think what we're trying to do here, when we do any filtration, is we want to deodorize, we want to mask. That tells me whenever I hear of a distillery or a brand doing that, they're trying to hide something. They're not trying to add... They're adding something to hide something. Why?
10:49 Dan Pashman? Charcoal filtered.
10:51 Speaker 02 And that's typically what you see in what you... a Brita water filter. It acts like a deodorizer. You're removing a scent. Does that matter? Sure, it matters as far as deodorizing some nasty odors that would ordinarily come and reach your nose and your palate. But again, you're masking something there.
11:07 Dan Pashman? Crafted in an old-fashioned pot still.
11:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, so pot stills have been used for some time, for hundreds of years, almost since the beginning, and there is something about honoring age-old techniques. I think that's really important, honoring age-old techniques, when you are, the people have been doing it for ages. If you're a finance guy that just left to open up your own distillery and you're starting to work on a pot still, I really don't know what that mean, how, do you really know? Do you have the know-how and the history and the support network to really understand how that pot still works? Pot stills are not the most efficient at distillation, period. Glass and stainless steel, gentlemen, these are two inventions, two discoveries made by humans that are really,
11:53 Speaker 02 really important and really, really good and efficient at distilling and making spirits.
11:58 Dan Pashman? So again, Alex, the raw material doesn't matter to the final flavor. There is no flavor.
12:04 Speaker 01 But, he did say, how you treat that raw material does affect what's in the vodka. That's because there are three stages of distilling.
12:12 Speaker 02 Three categories: heads, hearts, and tails.
12:15 Speaker 01 Heads, hearts, and tails. Okay, Ronak explained that when you start to heat the alcohol to distill it, the first part of the steam that comes up before anything else, that part is called the heads. That part is not supposed to be for drinking.
12:27 Speaker 02 It's the stuff that can contain methanol, the stuff that moon chiners are getting in trouble with, going blind, even being fatally, fatally hurt by it. You don't want to drink your heads. You want to remove that.
12:37 Speaker 01 And then the next part, that's the good stuff, the hearts. So the stuff Ronak wants to keep, that is the vapor in the middle, and then...
12:45 Speaker 02 The last part is your tails, okay? That's the stuff that's potable, but stuff that's been in our industry, we know to give you hangovers, can contain some nasty smells, some aromas.
12:55 Dan Pashman? So in theory, isolate the hearts, get rid of the heads and tails, and then when the vodka's run through the still a second time, you start with only the hearts and then isolate the hearts of the hearts. So if a vodka's distilled six times, that should mean it's only the very best part, the hearts of the hearts of the hearts of the, well, you get the idea.
13:13 Speaker 01 But, Ronak says that if you wanted to make a super-cheap vodka, you would just leave in extra tails through each run of the still, and then you'd just get more product to sell. The best vodkas, the ones that are sticklers for quality, they take just the hearts. So, there is a difference, Dan.
13:32 Dan Pashman? Maybe. And look, I like Ronak. He seems like a great guy. But remember, he's selling vodka for 40 bucks a bottle. So I don't think he's gonna say that his is just the same as the $10 stuff on the bottom shelf.
13:43 Speaker 01 Ronak did tell us one other interesting thing. Remember how he was one of the only distillers who we called up? Who actually said, "Yeah, sure. Come on over. Take a look around."
13:51 Dan Pashman? Yep, yep. That's true.
13:52 Speaker 01 He says that is because a lot of vodka labels don't distill their own alcohol. They buy it in bulk from somebody else.
14:02 Speaker 02 Very often, this is not just vodka. Whiskey especially is the case in America, where there's just a very few producers, but a lot of brands, right? So the distill is all coming from one location. Whenever I see five times distilled, six times distilled, this is a very common number I see in our industry. And that tells me, "Oh yeah, there are some pretty big commercial manufacturers that are manufacturing this, doing five times, six times distilled, and selling that off to other distilleries, who then don't distill it, who don't do anything other than just add water to it, slap a label on it, and call it whatever vodka."
14:35 Dan Pashman? And that seems so weird to me, because with every one of these vodkas, we hear this fairy tale about how the craft, copper still, blah, blah, blah.
14:42 Speaker 01 Kissed by the Colorado Rapids.
14:44 Dan Pashman? Exactly, yeah. But I set out to find out how bulk buying works. And it's true. There's this one company that's huge. Like, everyone in the liquor industry knows them. Ultra Pure. They say they have the largest selection of bulk alcohol in the world. They sell basically pure alcohol, like vodka concentrate. It's a base. Lots of companies buy it and use it to make their own vodka brands. Some of the companies take the base and distill it further. They tweak it. They put their own spin on it. But Ultra Pure told me that the more price-driven companies, they just take the base, add water, and they're in business. They're selling vodka. So I called them up and I said, "Hey, can I get some of that vodka concentrate?" And they said, "Yeah, no problem. Samples are in the mail."
15:23 Speaker 01 I appreciate this. I like it. I am looking forward to our science experiment. But I do not see how a vodka concentrate from a warehouse is gonna be better than Grey Goose.
15:32 Dan Pashman? Oh, yes, of course, Alex. The famous Grey Goose from France, with the French flag on the bottle, from the vaunted tradition of French vodka.
15:40 Speaker 01 I see what you're doing.
15:41 Dan Pashman? I mean, yeah, back in the Palace of Versailles, I hear that the vodka flowed all day and night.
15:46 Speaker 01 Just keep going. The stage is yours.
15:47 Dan Pashman? In fact, when you think of alcoholic beverages in France, is there any alcoholic beverage that would even cross your mind other than vodka? I think not.
15:56 Speaker 01 Okay.
15:57 Dan Pashman? I mean, go to the cave paintings of Lascaux and you will see murals of vodka as far as the eye can see. It is quintessentially French beverage.
16:05 Speaker 01 You are making your point well.
16:07 Dan Pashman? Let's get real, Alex. Grey Goose was invented in the 90s by a college dropout from Connecticut.
16:12 Speaker 03 Sidney Frank, he is a classic American businessman, in almost a cliche, both in good ways and in bad ways. Like, he came from nothing, poor, he went to Brown, but he only went to Brown for one year because he couldn't afford it.
16:29 Dan Pashman? This is Matthew Latkowitz.
16:31 Speaker 03 I'm a drink writer and the author of You Suck at Drinking.
16:34 Speaker 01 So how many drinks do you have a day, on average?
16:38 Speaker 03 Oh, well, I'm trying to cut back. When I was at the height of my drink-writing powers, uh, oh, gosh, five to eight.
16:48 Speaker 01 We are such amateurs.
16:50 Dan Pashman? Anyway, Sidney Frank drops out of college, ends up marrying a woman from a wealthy family, and her family business is liquor. So he kind of slides into the liquor business sideways.
17:00 Speaker 03 He didn't love liquor necessarily, he was just looking for niche products. And he stumbles on this bar where he sees these old German folks drinking Jägermeister, which at the time, this was in the 80s, was selling like 500 cases a year. Like, nothing, nothing at all.
17:19 Dan Pashman? So Sidney Frank buys the rights to import Jägermeister, which, if you don't know it, it's a liqueur that's sort of herbal, tastes kind of like black licorice cough syrup.
17:27 Speaker 01 Which probably explains the low sales.
17:29 Dan Pashman? And he buys it precisely because it isn't well-known. And it doesn't really do much beyond the old German man market for a while. But then, he hears about students at Louisiana State University actually liking Jägermeister. There's an article in the local paper that says, "All the kids know this is what you drink when you want to get drunk."
17:46 Speaker 03 One of them described it as liquid Valium. And that was what kicked off. He was like college kids. And with Jägermeister, he essentially invents all of the garbage that we may know about liquor companies and their marketing practices now. He basically invents them.
18:03 Dan Pashman? He sponsors parties. He butters up bartenders. He even sets up a team of scandalously clad women to give away free shots.
18:10 Speaker 03 Yep. Yeah, they were called the Jägerets. That was a Sidney Frank special right there. So he had this kind of guerrilla marketing savvy. You know, he kind of didn't play by any of the normal rules.
18:21 Dan Pashman? So just to put a button on it, Alex, in case it wasn't clear, Sidney Frank took a drink popular with old German men and turned it into the hottest drink for the party set on college campuses. And after he did that, he set his sights higher on vodka.
18:36 Speaker 01 And at the time, the fanciest vodka around was Absolut vodka. It had a great marketing campaign, but by today's standards, it wasn't really an expensive bottle of vodka. And that's what Sidney Frank knows is his competition. But the thing he focuses on is not the taste of Absolut, of course. It is the price.
18:53 Speaker 03 He essentially, out of thin air, goes, "I want to make a vodka." So Absolut's charging 15. I'll charge 30. He didn't even have a product at this point.
19:01 Dan Pashman? But he already knows he's going to charge double. And in order to do that, he needs a product that screams luxury.
19:08 Speaker 03 It's got to be the best. Everything that is the best comes from France. So he goes to France and he looks around for distillers. He says, "Can you make vodka?" He finds somebody who says, "Yes, of course, they can make vodka."
19:19 Speaker 01 And so he goes around to bars with his French vodka, making it seem special. He made a big deal that it was made of French wheat. All kinds of things designed to make Grey Goose seem different from other vodkas.
19:29 Speaker 03 He would give them the bottle in these wooden boxes with straw inside and nicely packaged. It'd be this large, clear bottle with the frosted glass that when you put it up on the back bar, would catch whatever light was there and it would kind of glow.
19:42 Dan Pashman? It's not that he didn't care about taste at all. It's just that he didn't start there.
19:46 Speaker 03 He did submit it to the BTI, which is the Beverage Tasting Institute. And it was awarded the best tasting vodka in the world in whatever 90, early 90s thing.
19:59 Dan Pashman? And he used that in his marketing a lot. Sidney Frank's whole plan worked. Vodka is now the most popular liquor in America, and he died a very rich man.
20:08 Speaker 01 He sold Grey Goose to Bacardi less than 10 years after he started it for more than $2 billion. And, and before you even start on this, Dan.
20:16 Dan Pashman? I'm tempted to start, Alex.
20:17 Speaker 01 I see how this whole story argues that, that it's just marketing, that all vodkas are the same, that my allergy to cheap vodkas that I genuinely feel is all just in my head. But I think we should still test this as scientifically as we can.
20:31 Dan Pashman? I agree, Alex, and I got good news. Guess what just arrived in the mail? The vodka concentrate I ordered from Ultra Pure.
20:38 Speaker 01 Oh, boy.
20:43 Dan Pashman? Coming up, Alex and I attempt to make our own super premium vodka. Then we send it to a lab to see how it measures up against Grey Goose. Plus, we'll check in at the bar to see how Alex's face is doing. Did you bring an EpiPen? I totally think I even brought my inhaler. Stick around.
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24:25 Dan Pashman? Welcome back to A Sporkful Reheat. I'm Dan Pashman. Hey, if you're not already following The Sporkful in your podcasting app, what are you waiting for? In Apple Podcasts and Spotify, go to our show page and click Follow. In other apps, it might be like a plus sign, or a subscribe button, or a heart. Whatever it is in your podcasting app, please do that thing. It's the best way to ensure you'll never miss an episode, and it's good for our show. So please, go ahead and do it right now while you're listening. Thank you.
24:53 Dan Pashman? Now, back to today's show. And I'm here with my friend Alex Goldmark from Planet Money, and we are about to make our own vodka. So Alex, we got this vodka concentrate from Ultra Pure, and I picked out one in particular that I think you're gonna be excited about.
25:06 Speaker 01 Okay.
25:06 Dan Pashman? Ultra Pure sells a vodka concentrate made in France with French wheat four times distilled.
25:12 Speaker 01 That sounds pretty good. I'd even say, it sounds like it could be the best, the best that comes from France.
25:17 Dan Pashman? Exactly, Alex, that's right. Now, look, Ultra Pure told us they don't sell to Grey Goose, but they're clearly going for something similar here. I mean, there aren't that many vodka distilleries in France. We're not talking about wineries here, okay?
25:28 Speaker 01 And four time distilled sounds good to me, maybe even premium?
25:32 Dan Pashman? I would go so far as to call it super premium, Alex. And that's what we're gonna do right now. We're gonna make our own super premium vodka. To clarify, Grey Goose is distilled only once, not four times.
25:44 Speaker 01 I don't know, this looks like a, like a travel shampoo bottle sized bottle with very clear white liquid in it. And they're wrapped in bubble wrap and taped. That's what we're taking off now. The labels look kinda homemade, though, Dan.
25:56 Dan Pashman? Yes, they look like they were printed on somebody's inkjet printer.
26:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, but not even with like the right alignment, because alcohol sort of falls off the end.
26:03 Dan Pashman? Yeah, like the label, yeah, they're cut off, yeah.
26:05 Speaker 01 Okay, well, our vodka company's off to a good start.
26:09 Speaker 01 We've got this very handy, fancy, highly scientific graduated cylinder that Planet Money owns, going back to our story on class action lawsuits.
26:17 Dan Pashman? Now, here comes the part of this entire story that I have most been dreading.
26:21 Speaker 01 What?
26:22 Dan Pashman? Math.
26:24 Dan Pashman? Grey Goose and most vodkas are 80 proof, which means 40% alcohol. But these bottles are not some even easy to work with number. They're 192 proof. So we gotta bring those down to 80 proof by adding water. OK.
26:38 Speaker 01 It's 192 proof, so if we have to make--
26:41 Dan Pashman? This is hard because--
26:42 Speaker 01 We have our intern here, Aviva--
26:43 Speaker 04 Happy to be here.
26:43 Speaker 01 And she's got a calculator.
26:44 Dan Pashman? This is not 100%.
26:45 Speaker 01 I'm gonna tell you how this math works.
26:46 Dan Pashman? If this was 100%--
26:47 Speaker 01 Then we need to have 83.333--
26:49 Dan Pashman? No, no, no.
26:50 Speaker 01 Kenny's the math major. Listen--
26:52 Dan Pashman? Let's get Kenny in here.
26:53 Speaker 01 Kenny's on deadline.
26:54 Dan Pashman? So Kenny, we heard you're a math major. Oh, God. We have a math question for you. Which is 192-- 200 milliliters of 80 proof vodka.
27:02 Speaker 01 All right, how many milliliters is this? Well, we're gonna pour it in here. OK, and what are you cutting it with again? Water. Water? That purified water we got from the drugstore. This isn't how you make vodka, is it?
27:22 Dan Pashman? So we bottled our homemade French wheat vodka in a sterilized bottle and sent it to a lab because we wanted to see how it measures up. Thing is, we gotta test it against something, right, Alex?
27:32 Speaker 01 Sure, naturally.
27:33 Dan Pashman? So we also sent some Grey Goose in an unmarked bottle. And we decided to send them some of the cheap stuff, the Alex Special, bottom shelf, plastic bottle.
27:43 Speaker 01 We sent the whole thing to San Diego, to a place called White Labs. This is a whole lab where they test different types of alcohol.
27:50 Dan Pashman? Which I think, Alex, is something you and I have been doing for quite some time ourselves.
27:53 Speaker 01 Especially this week for this episode.
27:55 Dan Pashman? That's right. While the lab runs its tests, please enjoy this musical interlude.
28:06 Dan Pashman? To get our results, we called up Nava Parker. She's a vice president at White Labs.
28:10 Speaker 01 Did our samples-- I'm just curious, did they look professional? Did we look like a good vodka startup to you when you took them out?
28:17 Speaker 05 They absolutely did.
28:18 Speaker 01 Ah, that's gratifying.
28:19 Speaker 05 Yeah.
28:20 Dan Pashman? Nava ran our vodka samples through what they call a comprehensive spirits test. It measures different chemicals in the alcohol that people might be able to taste. Also, it tests for chemicals that just shouldn't be there.
28:31 Speaker 01 We sent them three bottles with no labels, just a number on them. Number one was Grey Goose. Number two was our homemade French wheat vodka. And number three was the bottom shelf, plastic bottle vodka.
28:40 Dan Pashman? And Nava said one of the vodkas stood out because it had more of this one specific compound. It's called one propanol. And that's not a good thing. You want less of it in your vodka.
28:51 Speaker 05 Typically, when you taste one propenol, that's more of that harsher alcohol, kind of grainy alcohol compound.
28:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, like nail polish remover.
29:00 Dan Pashman? Right, so the vodka that has more of that stuff is not as good, according to this test.
29:04 Speaker 05 So it's possible that that shows that maybe this product wasn't distilled as many times or distilled to, you know, the same amount of purity as the other two, which have lower levels.
29:16 Dan Pashman? Based on that information, Neva, which of these three vodkas would you suspect should be the cheapest, least desirable vodka?
29:26 Speaker 01 OK, remember, Grey Goose is number one. Our homemade vodka is number two. And the cheap stuff in a plastic bottle is number three.
29:34 Speaker 05 If I had to choose, based on this analysis alone, I would say number one.
29:42 Speaker 01 And which would be the ultra-luxury choice?
29:45 Speaker 05 Number three.
29:46 Speaker 01 Number three.
29:47 Dan Pashman? So based on this, number three is the best vodka that money can buy of these three?
29:52 Speaker 01 To be clear, Neva said that all three of these vodkas, they had less of that bad stuff than anyone was going to be able to taste. But from what she could tell, the plastic bottle vodka seemed like the best. Grey Goose seemed like the cheapest. And our homemade vodka held its own against both of them.
30:12 Speaker 05 I mean, look at these. They all look very similar as well.
30:15 Speaker 01 So would you say that ours is basically Grey Goose?
30:18 Speaker 05 Yes, I would.
30:19 Speaker 01 So we basically made Grey Goose. Wow.
30:25 Dan Pashman? We did talk to Grey Goose. Their global brand ambassador, Joe McCanta, took issue with our test.
30:30 Speaker 06 Obviously, our product was decanted into another bottle. And when that happens, it kind of compromises our understanding of any testing that's done on the product afterwards.
30:41 Dan Pashman? He also argued that the odorless, tasteless law is more about distinguishing true vodka from vodkas that have stuff like fruit and sugar added. Pure vodka is its own category.
30:51 Speaker 06 Every vodka within the category will have its own characteristics, which would be largely attributed to the raw materials used to make the spirit or even the process used while distilling the spirit.
31:05 Speaker 01 One other thing that Neva told us about the vodkas that she tested, and I especially like this part. Even if you can't taste the difference, trace amounts of any compound in the vodka you're drinking could be enough to set off an allergy. Like maybe making your face turn red when you're drinking cheap vodka.
31:23 Dan Pashman? But the bottom line for me, science shows that if you don't have an allergy, all vodkas are pretty much the same.
31:28 Speaker 01 But if you do, there is one last test.
31:32 Dan Pashman? All right, Alex, you've moved on to drink number two. How are you feeling?
31:35 Speaker 01 I actually do feel the redness coming on. You're telling me I don't have it?
31:39 Dan Pashman? I mean, look, Alex, you've convinced me. I think what we have learned here today is that the differences between cheap and expensive vodkas may not be tastable for most people, maybe not even for you, but that your delicate constitution may be sensitive to them on the inside.
31:58 Speaker 01 That was a polite way of saying a lot of mean things, but I appreciate that.
32:04 Speaker 01 And I will take it.
32:08 Dan Pashman? Alex never did turn red that night. He can't say why.
32:11 Speaker 01 I was a little red. I was a little red.
32:19 Dan Pashman? Alex Goldmark, my friend from Planet Money. You know, I always meant to take economics in college, but it always met Friday mornings at 9:30 a.m., and so I refused to take it. And I figured that I would pick up economics, you know, just as I went through life. And most of what I know now I've learned from listening to Planet Money because it's the show that's for people like me who don't actually understand it intuitively.
32:41 Speaker 01 We try to have fun while talking about serious economic topics.
32:45 Dan Pashman? Well, Alex, here's to many more good times drinking, sometimes for podcasts, sometimes just for fun. Take it easy.
32:51 Speaker 01 I look forward to it. Thanks a lot, Dan.
32:55 Dan Pashman? This episode was originally produced by Anne Sannie and me. The update was produced by Emma Morgenstern and Andres O'Hara. Jared O'Connell is our engineer. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Peter Clowney and Daisy Rosario. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
33:12 Speaker 07 And I'm Christine from Brooklyn, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.
33:36 Dan Pashman? This reheat was produced by Gianna Palmer. The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern. And senior producer Andres O'Hara. Our engineer is
33:46 Speaker 02 Jared O'Connell.
33:47 Dan Pashman? The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher Studios. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
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