How to transform a cheap Vodka into something good

Recently I wrote an article about a new cheap African Vodka brand named “Chrome Vodka”. You probably remember? Now I wish to introduce some rather alchemistic tricks to you, that can transform a terrible tasting Vodka to a tolerable “after work”-drink. You better take all the necessary equipment with you once you travel. It might come in handy someday.

Stranded with an intolerable Vodka?
Imagine you strand in a medium class hotel in a foreign capital city – and there is but one Vodka brand available for you. You unsuspectingly open the bottle and sip on it. In your memory, even a middle-class Vodka is absolutely tasteless and so there can be no Vodkas with very different characters in your opinion. You are in error, my friend. Obviously you do not travel much or never had the opportunity to drink an awful Vodka somewhere. If something like that happens to you, you might thank the gods that exist for all Vodkas you have ever came to buy somewhere. Your unpleasant Vodka-candidate is probably filled into a plastic bottle and thus tastes of phtalates or worse. It might even remind you of battery acid or shaving creme. Even for a person who is not an expert in Vodka matters, a consequent line must be drawn. You are definitely not a wastebin or something similar, right? What are the choices for you now? You can pour your drink through the drain to kill some fish somewhere – or you could become an expert alchemist who is able to make things better. Any affordable cheap Vodka can be transformed from a tastebud-experience in hell to digestive heaven in a hotel somewhere. Well, at least relatively speaking. But I promise that you will be able to drink a tolerable Vodka afterwards.

Secret procedures of transformation
With a cheap Vodka, you only need to involve some cheap household techniques to transform the undrinkable stuff. What you need is a conventional coffee filter, two funnels, some drinking glasses and activated carbon. Of course you should not yet have emptied the Vodka bottle. The filtering of Vodka with activated carbon in porous form clears the fluid of toxins. You can get this stuff at Amazon or in petshops, for example. Some Vodka experts would tell you that charcoal filtration techniques can be executed in various forms. There are sophisticated and more primitive filtering forms, which is a fact that comes in handy for us non-experts. I let you know that almost any Vodka distillery uses such a technique, mostly the more elabotated ones. The basic idea behind it is that the spirits run upwards and are pumped through a pressurized filter-tube. Some Vodka brands get 48 hours of filtration in one or two filtration processes, some even more. The basic process we will use here is similar. The primitive coffee filter method is as effective in the results. You can pass your intolerable Vodka through the activated carbon in the coffee filter and everything that was ignored by the filtration processes of the original distillery, will be vanishing.

It is very simple. You first need to wash the porous carbon granules to get rid of any dust particles and such. Place the wet carbon in your coffee filter. Put the filter in the funnel. Place your funnel over one of the glasses. Now you can pour the distasteful Vodka into your home-made funnel filter system. Watch the constant dripping of the Vodka as it gets cleared. Repeat the simple process when the first glass is filled, so that you filter the contents of the glass a second time. With every filtration act, you will get rid of more and more toxic ingedients which influenced the taste of your Vodka. Three filtration processes will probably do. Compare the results with the Vodka as it was before. You will taste the difference with any Vodka that is horrible, believe me.

Celebrate the improvements you made
Now your “Happy Hour” at the hotel can start. Your “post-filtration”-Vodka can not compete with the best Vodka brands you have ever tasted, but it will be acceptable. At least you will be able to say that you would probably drink it again under the same circumstances. The filtered Vodka is much milder and has lost its acrid or burning touch. Of course, I must admit that granulated carbon and paper coffee filters will influence the taste of the colorless liquid. Let’s say they leave their marks. In spite of that, the results of your new alchemistic talents will be much more tolerable as before. The alternative is to leave the hotel and look for a bar where you probably pay twice as much for a single shot glass of good Vodka. You have the choices.