Category: vodka

All About Absolut Elyx and “Sacrificial Copper”

Absolut Elyx is the newish, high-end expression of Absolut vodka. On a trip this past winter to Ahus, Sweden, where Absolut is made, we took a day to learn about Elyx.

Elyx is a single-estate vodka made in Absolut's old distillery (the new one is only 5 years old), in amazing copper column stills dating to 1921. I wish I had more pictures to share but they weren't allowed on our tour.

The winter wheat for Absolut Elyx is grown on an estate named Rabelof. Rabelof is located near Ahus, and everything for the vodka comes from within a 25km radius of the town. Here's a picture of a wheat field.

Like regular Absolut, the water comes from the large aquifer beneath Ahus.

The first distillation of the wheat is actually done at Absolut's newer distillery in Nobbelov. There, they use the same yeast and the same two first columns to distill Elyx.

The old distillery, scanned from a brand book they gave us.

Sacrificial Copper

In the tops of the column stills, they add "sacrificial copper." I recently learned and shared how in column distillation, copper is very important, but only needs to be present in certain parts of the distilation process in a column still.

From my understanding, the first stage of distillation is stripping out the liquids from the solids, and then the alcoholic vapors are refined often within the same column. This happens at the top of the column in a bourbon still, where you'd find "bubble caps". Bubble caps are a method of adding more copper into the process, and copper combines with sulphurous compounds so that they don't make it into the final spirit.

Beyond bubble caps, some distillers use a version of Brillo pads (shredded copper) in their stills. At Absolut they use small segments of copper pipe that are further punctured increase surface area exposed to the alcohol. They use this sacrificial copper in regular Absolut, but apparently for Elyx they use new ones for every distillation run.

After the first distillation (in the first two columns) at Nobbelov, the 85% alcohol spirit then travels to the old distillery at Ahus. There it is rectified in column stills dating to 1921. This part of the distillery is rather gorgeous, with huge tall copper columns with wooden insulator jackets surrounding them. The building is filled pre-computer analogue dials, gauges, old pumps, leather belts, and big piston engines.

Here, the spirit is distilled in one extraction column, two rectification columns, and in two methanol columns. As at the new distillery, there is also a recovery column that recycles waste products.

Absolut Elyx is bottled at 42.3% ABV.

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November 19, 2013
Making Absolut Vodka: A Trip to Ahus, Sweden
Absolut vodka is made in southern Sweden, in the town of Ahus in the Skane region. I took a trip there this winter to learn how the vodka is made. The distillery can produce 650,000 bottles of vodka per day and I had about that many questions for the producers.

I think it's best to break the process of making the vodka down into its components.

Wheat

Absolut purchases 20 percent of the wheat grown in the large Skane region of Sweden; about 125,000 tons of it annually.

It is winter wheat, planted in September and harvested in August, nearly a year later. The wheat grown in the southernmost part of Sweden near the distillery is best for producing vodka, while much northern wheat is better for use in making bread.

Wheat best for making bread is high in protein and gluten, and is heavy. It also has a low yield per hectare. Wheat for vodka is lower in protein but of course high in starch as that is what is turned into fermentable sugars.

Wheat crops are rotated with sugar beets, barley, and/or rapeseed.

Because Absolut is such a huge operation, grain is delivered to the distillery every two hours as they don't have space to store months' worth on-site.

Once the wheat reaches the distillery, it is ground into a flour and checked in a sizing machine to make sure that every bit of it is ground to less than 1.5mm in size.

Fermentation

The region is set upon a natural aquifer from which they pull water 146 meters below ground. For the fermentation process, they only filter the water through sand. (For dilution to bottle proof, they use reverse osmosis filtration.)

They then heat up water with flour but instead of making paper mache with it, they add enzymes to break down the wheat into fermentable sugars. They actually use two types: a "liquification enzyme" that turns the wheat into long-chain polysaccharides, and a "sacrification enzyme" that turns these polysaccharides into fermentable sugar.

Then it's ready to be fermented in one of ten of their 600,000 liter fermentation tanks. They use a dried yeast culture that is first hydrated for 8 hours, and then added to the tanks where fermentation takes between 50 and 55 hours.

Heat and carbon dioxide are captured from this process and recycled or sold.

Legal Break!

According to European Union law, vodka must be distilled to above 95 percent pure alcohol and bottled at a minimum of 37.5 percent ABV. It can be made from anything but if it is not made from grain or potatoes (as in the case of vodka made from sugar beets or molasses or grapes) it must specify that on the label.

Distillation

No surprise, the column stills at Absolut are very big. Here's how they break them down:
- The first column is the mash column – where the yeasty, grainy, sugary beer goes in and is separated from the water and alcohol.
- The second column is the raw spirit column that helps remove some sulphurous compounds. The spirit has been distilled up to 85% alcohol after this point.
- The next column is the extraction column. The spirit is diluted with water then redistilled to remove aldehydes.
- The main rectification columnn (actually divided into two columns to keep the height down) further refines the spirit and brings it up to 96.4% alcohol.
- The last column for making vodka is the methanol column, which removes methanol. Unlike most columns, in a methanol column the spirit comes out the bottom of the column, while the vapors to be discarded – the more volatile methanol- comes off the top.
- There is a final column called the recovery column. Some of the stuff that goes through it is pulled off and redistilled into vodka, while other is sold to make cleaning products and such.
For a larger write-up of multi-column distillation, see this post on how multi-column distillation works on Alcademics.

Filtration and Dilution

The water used to dilute the vodka to bottle strength comes from the local aquifer, filtered with reverse osmosis. They say that their water still affects the mouthfeel of the product. One representative said, "The cleaner the water source in the fist place the less you have to clean it. It doesn't affect the taste of the vodka but it does the texture. It contributes a greater mouthfeel to the final product."

Unlike many vodkas, Absolut does not undergo "active filtration," also known as carbon filtration. Nor, they say, do they use any 'rounding' agents (like sugar or glycerin) in the unflavored vodka.

Bottling

We visited one of the bottling facilities, which are usually pretty boring. But at the one we saw, three weeks' worth of vodka were stored in this massive warehouse. One room looked to be about 8 storeys tall with racks to hold palettes of vodka from floor to ceiling. In the tiny aisles in between the racks, computer-controlled forklift things would whip around in three-dimensions lifting cases and placing them on shelves or retrieving them to fill an order. It looked a lot like the things that hold the doors in Monsters, Inc.

From the bottling facility, the majority of the vodka is shipped over water to Germany, where it is distributed to the rest of the world.

Related articles

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August 15, 2013
How Grey Goose is Made
This September I visited Cognac, France to judge a competition for Grey Goose vodka. While there, I learned about the production process. I'm sorry I don't have pictures of all this to share- you like reading, right?

Grey Goose is made in two parts: in Picardy, in the north of France, where the wheat is grown and distilled; and Cognac, France, where the wheat spirit and water are filtered and bottled.

Picardy, France. Image from Wikipedia

The Wheat

Grey Goose is made from soft winter wheat grown in Picardy. In that region they grow tons of wheat for France (and you know how the French like baguettes). The temperature never goes below -5 degrees Celsius and in the summer not hotter than 25 or 35 degrees. Winter wheat is sewn in October and harvested in August, giving it 10 months to grow strong, as opposed to summer wheat that grows in 6 months and is more fragile.

The wheat is grown by many farms, then sold to and classified by a co-op. They use only that classified as "superior bread-making wheat" for Grey Goose. Soft wheat, as opposed to hard wheat, is better for distilling according to Maitre de Chai Francois Thibault. I takes about 1 kilo of wheat to make 1 bottle of vodka.

Milling and Fermentation

Interestingly, Grey Goose doesn't own their distillery, yet they have an exclusive contract with the distillery and they produce only Grey Goose there. The distillery is also located in Picardy, and it sounds like quite the huge operation. The entire distilling process is one continuous operation – wheat goes in and spirit comes out with the whole thing in motion.

The wheat, purchased from three different co-ops, enters the distillery, where it is cleaned and then milled. It is milled four times over the course of 24 hours. The husks, which won't ferment, are sold as cattle field. The flour goes through to fermentation.

To break the carbohydrates in the flour down into fermentable sugars, enzymes are added. They add one enzyme that cuts the starch into random sized pieces, then cool it, then add another enzyme that cuts those pieces into evenly sized fermentable sugars.

Why use enzymes? I asked Francois Thibault that question. He said that unlike barley, which can be prepared to transform into fermentable sugars by the malting process, wheat doesn't germinate (see geeky explanation by Ben in the comments). However, as with bourbon, malted barley could be added to the corn/wheat to help transform its starches into fermentable sugars. Thibault says though they could use malted barely, using enzymes is more stable, efficient, and cleaner; and no undesired microorganisms will be added during the process.

Now the wheat is ready for fermentation. They use a commercial (non-proprietary) yeast strain that is prepared elsewhere.

Fermentation takes place in a continuous manner – this is something I've not seen at other distilleries, though I think this technology is used elsewhere. Typically, the wheat/corn/whatever that is being fermented goes into a big vat, ferments completely, then the vat is emptied out. This is a batch process.

For Grey Goose, they use a continuous fermentation process over a series of six cascading tanks. Wheat and yeast goes in the first tank, then pours into each successive tank operating at a different phase in the fermentation process. At the end, the liquid is fully fermented in the form of a beer at 10% alcohol by volume. This takes about 30 hours. New wheat and yeast is constantly added to the first tank and beer is constantly pulled out of the last one.

Distilling

Then the beer is distilled into spirit. They use a five column distillation process. Despite the names given to each of thecolumn stills, they're more or less the same stills, just fine tuned with number of plates, pressure and temperature settings, etc., to do a certain job.
- The first column strips out the water and produces a spirit at 92% alcohol.
- The second column is tuned for "hydro-selection," meaning the spirit is watered back down before entering it, and it is redistilled to remove certain components.
- The third column is "rectification under pressure" and the fourth is "rectification under vacuum." Both of these strip out high and low oils.
- The last column is tuned for "demethanolisation."
The waste products of distillation are redistilled and sold off as industrial alcohol.

The entire process from when the wheat enters the distillery until it leaves takes four and a half to five days.

Filtration, Water, and Bottling

I didn't have the opportunity to visit the wheat fields and distillery in Picardy, but I did get to visit the bottling facility near Cognac.

The water used to bottle Grey Goose comes from a well 500 feet deep beneath the bottling plant. As the soil is full of limestone (just like in Kentucky), the resulting water is full of calcium.

The water is filtered to remove the minerals using double reverse osmosis. Thibault emphasized that the machine can't make great water out of bad water, so they have to start with good stuff like they have. Furthermore Thibault says they don't filter it to 100% pure H20 – they do it to their specifications and leave in the rest for character.

The water is mixed with vodka to bottling proof and then filtered again, this time through pads of cellulose and carbon.

I was curious as to why they don't just bottle the vodka up in Picardy. Thibault says they didn't really consider it – he was based in Cognac (he was a cognac and other spirit maker) when Sidney Frank asked him to develop Grey Goose, and he knew the water in the region was good. He says it was a practical decision to grow the wheat and distill in Picardy and transport it Cognac rather than ship the water of Cognac to Picardy or to try to grow wheat in the Cognac region.

Finally, the bottles are also produced in France. At the bottling facility they only bottle Grey Goose, no other products.

The Glycerin Question

Grey Goose has long been the victim of rumors that it has something added to it to make it smoother. Darcy O'Neil tested Grey Goose for glycerol and found none. But other additives are allowed by US law (sugar, and I think citric acid, for example). So I asked Thibault directly if anything was added to Grey Goose after distillation besides water. He said "Absolutely nothing," and I believe him.
October 4, 2012
Filtration in Spirits: A Primer

For CLASS Magazine online at DiffordsGuide.com, I wrote an article about filtration in spirits. This was based on the research I did for my talk on the subject at the Manhattan Cocktail Classic earlier this year.

Don't Forget the Filtration Factor
By Camper English

Nearly every spirit undergoes some sort of filtration, yet we rarely acknowledge it as part of production. But filtration makes vodka what it is today, practically defines Tennessee whiskey, is the standard in making white rum, and is changing the look of tequila. Filtration is important.

Generally speaking, filtration refers to the mechanical process of passing a liquid or gas through a medium that keeps out solids of a certain size. But in spirits, we include carbon filtration (sometimes called carbon treatment) as filtration too. Carbon filtration works differently: by absorption, the adhesion of particles to a surface, like flypaper.

I researched filtration in spirits for a talk at this year's Manhattan Cocktail Classic. While I can't claim category-wide or hands-on expertise in this matter, I spoke with several industry sources who know their stuff. Consider this an introduction to the subject.

The article covers filtration in vodka, rum, tequila, whisk(e)y, and cognac. I hope you'll find it interesting. Get the full story here.

Update: The story came off the site, so here it is in its entirety:

Filtration in Spirits

Camper English

Nearly every spirit undergoes some sort of filtration, yet we rarely acknowledge it as part of production. But filtration makes vodka what it is today, practically defines Tennessee whiskey, is the standard in making white rum, and is changing the look of tequila. Filtration is important.

Generally speaking, filtration refers to the mechanical process of passing a liquid or gas through a medium that keeps out solids of a certain size. (Think of a screen door.) But in spirits, we include carbon filtration (sometimes called carbon treatment) as filtration too. Carbon filtration works differently: By adsorption, the adhesion of particles to a surface. (Think of flypaper.)

I researched filtration in spirits for a talk at the Manhattan Cocktail Classic in May 2012. While I can’t claim category-wide or hands-on expertise in this matter, I spoke with several industry sources who know their stuff. Consider this an introduction to the subject.

Vodka, Charcoal, Tequila, and Rum

Early vodka was surely very different from the perfectly clear, nearly-neutral spirit we know today. True, distillation was cruder, performed in pot stills rather than in today’s hyper-efficient columns, but filtration helped rid vodka of lots of nastiness. Much early vodka filtration seems to resemble “fining” in wine and beer – a fining agent speeds up precipitation of impurities in the liquid. Fining agents have included egg whites, milk, gelatin, fish bladders, something called “blood powder.” Vodka has also been filtered through sand and other soils (this process is still used in water treatment), felt, and other materials.

But activated carbon (charcoal) seems to have the largest impact on vodka and other spirits, or at least it is the most commonly used filtration method. In vintage vodka, charcoal derived from trees was used to clean up the liquid, but today charcoal for filtration may come from wood, nut shells (coconut especially), and even bones. (Fun fact: some white table sugar is clarified using bone charcoal, rendering it non-vegetarian.)

Vodkas today advertise a range of other material to complement the carbon. These include birch charcoal, quartz sand, and algae (Ladoga), Herkimer Diamonds (Crystal Head), freeze filtration, Z-carbon filter, and silver (Stoli Elit), Platinum (Platinka), Gold (Lithuanian), Lava Rock (Hawaiian, Reyka), and marble (Akvinta). Though many of these methods sound like pure marketing, in fact some of these precious materials like platinum and silver do improve filtration efficiency. (For very detailed information on some vodka filtration technologies, this site https://www.vodka-tf.com/ is quite a read.)

Charcoal filtering is also commonly used in tequila. According to one tequila producer, this is because the law for tequila production (the NOM) specifies amounts of impurities like esters and furfural that may be present in tequila, and these numbers are difficult to consistency hit with distillation alone. Thus, charcoal filtration cleans up the impurities in tequila a little bit – but also removes some flavor with it.

Charcoal filtration can remove color as well as flavor and impurities. Many ‘white’ rums are aged a year or more in ex-bourbon barrels, and then filtered for clarity. Charcoal filtration (and other new-at-the-time technologies such as aging and column distillation) helped make Bacardi the popular and later global brand of rum that it is today. This lighter, clear style of rum born, in Cuba, is often called the ‘international style’ that won out in popularity over regional production methods.

All charcoal isn’t created the same, however. Should you take a dark rum and run it through a water filter repeatedly, you may not lose any color. (I tried.) Some parameters that distillers investigate in choosing the right carbon filtration material include the base material (bone, nut charcoal, wood, etc), the “iodine number” and the “molasses number,” the latter a measurement of decolorization. Activated carbon meant for cleaning up water may not be of any use in stripping color from liquids.

Decolorization has allowed for a new trend in tequila: aged tequila filtered to clarity. Probably the first tequila to do so was Maestro Dobel, a blend of reposado, anejo, and extra-anejo tequila filtered to near-clarity. In recent months, new brands have followed suit, including Casa Dragones (blanco and anejo mixed together and clarified), Milagro Unico (blanco with ‘aged reserves’), and Don Julio 70^th Anniversary Anejo Claro (clarified anejo). In the opposite direction, the first tequila that I’ve seen labeled as ‘unfiltered,’ a special cask-strength bottling of Ocho, has also just hit the market.

Whisky and Cognac

In both scotch and in bourbon, there is an increasing trend toward unfiltered whiskey, while chill filtration is still very much the norm. Chill filtration prevents cloudiness in spirits (particularly at low temperatures) and precipitation of particulates in the bottle. It is purely an aesthetic choice, not meant to affect the flavor of the spirit. However, many experts argue that it does alter (flatten) the flavor to some extent. (For a very nerdy analysis of chill filtration, we refer you to this information from Bruichladdich https://www.bruichladdich.com/library/bruichladdichs-guide-to-chill-filtration.)

As far as I have been able to learn, in chill filtration activated carbon is not used. The spirit is chilled to a certain degree, and then a cellulose or other paper filter is used to remove the esters and fatty acids that are less soluble at low temperatures. Whiskies bottled at higher proofs tend not to cloud, so many cask-strength whiskies and many (if not most) whiskies bottled at 46 percent alcohol or higher are non-chill filtered. Outside the bottle, however, when ice or water is added and they dilute, they may get cloudy.

Tennessee whiskey has its own style of filtration. After the spirit is distilled but before it goes into the barrel for aging, the whiskey is dripped through or soaked in tubs with about ten feet of charcoal made from sugar maple trees. Contrary to popular opinion, this is in no way required by law, but both Jack Daniel’s and George Dickel employ this technique. Gentlemen Jack is unusual in that it undergoes charcoal filtration a second time before bottling.

One cognac distiller revealed that filtration in cognac is also standard: cognac is run through paper filters of a specific (depending on the product) pore size to filter out undesired molecules. While most cognac is not chill-filtered, one producer said that when bottles are destined for cold-weather countries (cognac is popular in Scandinavia), it is often chill-filtered to prevent cloudiness in the bottle. It might be interesting to taste chill and non-chill filtered versions of the same cognac. The opportunity is rarely, if ever, afforded in scotch.

So, some form of filtration is used in about every type of spirit, whether that’s to change the color, clean up undesired impurities or clean out off flavors, to prevent cloudiness, or just to keep out chunks of stuff from floating in your bottle. As with the water used in fermentation, the type of still, and the location/condition of aging barrels, filtration is an important part of the process of making spirits and shouldn’t be so often overlooked.

August 14, 2012
Find Me in the Penthouse

Penthouse magazine, that is. I have a story in the April issue about my trip to Warsaw and the ancient forest with ZU vodka, the bison grass vodka known throughout the world as Zubrowka.

But I'm also in Penthouse as a model, again!

Of course you'll recognize my hand, sexily caressing that piece of bison grass. Damn I look good.

Always.

But if you don't have a subscription to the magazine you can read my write up here on Alcademics.

March 21, 2012
Instant Infusions in Tasting Panel Magazine

I have a short piece in Tasting Panel Magazine about the instant infusion method – using a whipped cream charger filled with nitrous oxide to infuse flavors in spirits – and Purity Vodka's promotion of the technique.

The story is at this link, which opens a digital magazine reader.

By the way, the original Dave Arnold post annoucing this method is here at CookingIssues.com.

December 21, 2011
A Trip to Sweden with Purity Vodka

This summer I went to Sweden (twice this year!) with Purity vodka. Purity is located not far from Malmo, across the water from Copenhagen, in a building on the estate of Ellinge Castle.

Now, Ellinge doesn't look like a typical castle, but there has been one in some form here since the early 14th century when the area belonged to Denmark. The building changed a lot over the years, but it still has a moat.

Currently the castle owners live in a big house also on the property, but rent out the castle itself for weddings and other events. I got to sleep there one night. I've never slept somewhere with a moat before, so that was awesome.

The castle is beautifully furnished with antiques and paintings, including one of Jesus turning water into wine at a dinner party. That's not the only connection the castle has to alchemy: there has always been a distillery on the property, as was commonplace in farming areas. (The farmlands around the castle grow things like wheat, barley, and rye, but they are not used in Purity because they're not certified organic.)

Making Vodka

Purity is made in this little building just across the moat from the castle. It's a tiny building, but they only do one part of the process here. Purity is a blend of a neutral, column-distilled spirit with a flavorful house-distilled spirit, brought down to proof with a blend of natural mineral water and deionized water. At the distillery, they produce the custom distillate.

The distillate made at the castle is a blend of wheat and barley, which is combined and fermented at a brewery near Copenhagen that is certified organic. Once that mash is brought here, the work begins.

The still has a pot still base with two columns attached. The distillate passes through the pot, then continues through the columns in a batch process. Each column has eight plates in it. At each plate the spirit passing through touches it and condenses.

If my understanding of this still is correct, what makes it different from others is that 95 percent of the spirit that condenses at each plate doesn't drop down to the plate beneath it, but all the way down to the bottom of the column. They consider each plate a full distillation, so the pot, plus eight plates in each of the two columns is 17 distillations. They run this process twice, so they figure it as 34 distillations before they get the final spirit.

I don't place a lot of importance on advertised number of distillations (as opposed to the taste), but the math makes sense.

Speaking of taste, we tasted the core spirit that comes out of the still. It is incredibly flavorful, tasting of strawberry jam, bread dough, blueberry figs, and a finish that's all herbal and wintergreen. In the mouth, a spiciness leaps out. It's quite an amazing distillate, and once I tasted it on its own I can now taste all of that in the finished bottle of Purity.

It takes them 10 hours for the first distillation, and because their cuts are so small, it takes 7 of the first distillations to get enough low wines to do the second distillation, which takes 6 hours. So that means to get one 'batch' of the flavorful spirit for Purity, it takes 76 hours.

Purity also tastes and smells of minerals, and I suspect that is from the mineral water used to dilute it to proof. Blender Thomas Kuuttanen says that it reminds him of rain falling on brackish water, and I can totally see that.

In the process of developing Purity Kuuttanen tried to use all mineral water, but found some minerals came out of solution after bottling, and left a white ring around the neck of the bottle. His task was finding the right balance between mineral and de-ionized water so that this didn't happen.

We were talking at the distillery about how rare it is to have more than one ingredient used in the mash of a vodka. Purity uses wheat and barely. Reyka uses the same two ingredients. Hangar One blends grape distillate with neutral distillate (wheat I think).

Anyway, I'll be writing a lot more about Purity for the Tasting Panel magazine, so I'll be sure to link to those in the future.

October 11, 2011
Hunting Bison in Poland with ZU Vodka

No bison were harmed in the writing of this blog post.

This summer I flew to Warsaw with ZU vodka, known in the rest of the world as Zubrowka. Zubrowka is bison grass vodka; vodka flavored with grass. The stuff tastes like caramel and jasmine and hay, and makes apple juice taste like apple pie.

Unfortunately, that delicious flavor comes from coumarin, a naturally-occurring compound that is banned as a food additive in the US. It is also in the tonka bean, which is why we can't have a historically-accurate recreation of Abbot's Bitters in the US either. (See this NYTimes story for more on that.)

(Mmm, delcious Coumarin. Image from Wikipedia.)

Coumarin is a blood thinner (anti-coagulant), and it is used to make Coumadin, a medicine that some people with blood clot disorders have to take before flying. Ironically, one of the people on the press trip had to take a shot of Coumadin before coming to Poland. If they had real Zubrowka in the US, she could have just chugged a bottle.

They've recreated the flavor of Zubrowka in ZU, using naturally-derived ingredients. In a blind taste test you can guess which is which, but they're pretty close.

A Trip to the Forest

We took a train for a few hours from Warsaw to Bialystok, where the distillery is located. But before seeing that, we went to see the Bialowieza Forest where the bison live and the bison grass grows.

The forest has various levels of protection in different parts. The first visit we took to it was by carriage, to the most protected part. The carriages aren't just for old-timey charm: no mechanical transportation is allowed in the forest and you must be accompanyed by a licensed guide.

The reason this forest is special is that it has for centuries been the protected property of the kings. It was used as their personal hunting ground for bison and a food reserve for the army. The forest is a UNESCO biosphere preserve and on the World Heritage List.

The forest is quite pretty, with tall skinny trees. This is the type of forest that would have covered most of Europe long ago.

Looking for Bison in All the Wrong Places

But to actually see the bison, you've got to get up pretty early in the morning. At 5AM we drove into the forest (this time, outside of the strict reserve but still where bison can be found) and walked along a path looking for them.

Unfortunately, none were to be found. The guide says at this time of the year the bison go into the deep forest to hide from the mosquitoes and flies, the very same ones that were biting us ferociously.

But it wasn't all for nothing. We also went searching for bison grass. The bison grass for Zubrowka is hand harvested by 21 or 22 families who know secret spots to pick it. Apparently you can grow bison grass on farms, but it doesn't have the same aroma as the natural stuff.

We walked down a trail in the forest, veered off it, cut through the woods, and found a whopping three blades of bison grass. Obviously, this wasn't one of the spots where they harvest it. But still, success!

We did manage to see actual bison, though they weren't free-roaming. We went to a reserve (sort of an outdoor zoo) where they show off the bison and other forest animals. Hi bison!

At the Distillery

After our forest visit, we went to see the distillery in Bialystok. The place is huge, as they make a lot of vodka for their unflavored Zubrowka (not available in the US) as well as other brands. Interestingly, this is not the start-to-finish point for ZU and other brands.

Closer to the farmlands where the rye is grown, there are smaller distilleries that do the fermentation and initial distillation. Polmos Bialystok (the name of this distillery) refines the distillation and adds any flavoring.

The bison grass is stored in a dark, refrigerated room in big paper bags.

The grass used to flavor the vodka is soaked in alcohol and water in a big washing machine thing for a couple days. They make a concentrate of the bison grass flavor, then add whatever amount they need to the final blend.

The grass that's used to decorate each bottle (there is a blade of grass in each) is soaked in higher-proof alcohol to suck out all the coumarin. It's then dried and inserted by hand in the bottling line.

In Your Mouth

The way ZU/Zubrowka is most commonly consumed is mixed with apple juice in a drink called the Szarlotka. It tastes kinda like apple pie. It's dumb and fun and more American bars should offer it. In Poland the apple juice was pretty cruddy, and it would certainly be improved with unfiltered apple juice.

October 3, 2011
An Amusingly Disgusting Way to Drink Vodka in Sweden

While I was in Sweden with Karlsson's Gold vodka, we learned a traditional way to drink vodka. It is called Kaffegök, and it is gross.

You take a cup and put a coin in the bottom.

Then you fill it with coffee until you can't see the coin anymore.

Then you add vodka until you can see the coin again. That's how you know you have enough vodka in there.

Then you drink it. Damnnnn that's some kinda breakfast.

September 23, 2011
Karlsson’s Vodka: It’s In The Blend

Months ago I started to talk about my trip to Sweden with Karlsson's vodka. I only covered how to pick potatoes so far.

The potatoes for this vodka all come from Cape Bjare in Sweden.To get there, we drove from Copenhagen, over the relatively new bridge that connects Denmark to Sweden with Malmo on the other side, then turned North to the Cape. The town we stayed in is called Torekov.

The nearby potato farms grow little heirloom potatoes called virgin potatoes whose skin has not yet developed. For these potatoes, smaller is better, and they're served seasonally as virgin/new/fresh potatoes, which they pronounce like "freshpotatoes" so it's easy to know what they are. They are in season from May through August. I ate approximately 700 pounds of them while on the trip.

Karlsson's doesn't necessarily distill the smallest ones, but instead the larger ones that are less desirable for eating. They're still relatively tiny compared to the giant American Russets. Virgin potatoes don't have a ton of starch in them (which will be converted to sugar, which can then be distilled into vodka) but they have a lot of flavor. It takes several times more of these potatoes to make vodka it does the American kind.

In a truly unusual move for vodka, the potato farmers who contribute to the blend are all minor shareholders in Karlsson's vodka.

The Blend

In the development of the blend that would become Karlsson's Gold, they initially distilled 20 different types of potatoes. The current blend of Karlsson's Gold uses seven. At the moment Karlsson's doesn't have their own distillery but uses a few others. All of them are single column stills.

They specify the distillation parameters (there is a minimum distillation proof to be considered vodka) and then get the liquid at the end.

While most brands of vodka emphasize their distillation and filtration technology, Karlsson's focuses on the blend. They recognize that ever year's distillation is different so they worry about it afterward.

We tasted several distillations of individual varietals including Solist and Old Swedish Red (Gammel Svensk Röd). We even tried several different years of Solist potatoes (the main component in the blend) from 2004, 2005, and 2006.

These vintages tasted very different from one another, from bitter and tangy to sweet and honeyed. It's hard to say if the potatoes vary that much year-to-year, or if they were just getting better at distilling them with passing years. The Old Swedish Red potato distillate is insane- it smells like the sea and reminded me of washed potato skins.

Karlsson's is a blend of 7 potato varietals and to me tastes of chocolate, caramel, and dusty chocolate-pecan, with a scent texture (my made-up term) is the dustiness of Red Vines when you first open the package.

Making Vodka

To get from potatoes to vodka, they first mush up the potatoes. They don't even need to add water. They bring them up to 95 degrees Celsius, then add enzymes to break the starch into dextrins. It is then cooled to 65 degrees then another enzyme is added. Then they're ready for fermentation.

The yeast used to convert the fermentable sugars into alcohol is the same strain as an old yeast used for potato vodka production years ago. They maintain cool temperatures during the fermentation process, as this produces less methanol than it would otherwise.

They use the sour mash method of yeast propagation/fermentation. This is when you add a splash of yeast from the previous batch of fermentation to the next one. This ensures consistency between batches and probably saves raw materials as well. After fermentation, the mash is only about six percent alcohol.

A couple days later on a boat on a cruise around the Stockholm, we met Karlsson's Master Blender Börje Karlsson, who also developed Absolut vodka. He's kind of a big deal.

When blender Karlsson created Absolut, it was developed as an export product only, to get around Sweden's ban against producing vodka from anything but potatoes. It's funny that he's now bucking the trend; making potato vodka despite the trend in the other direction.

(Karlsson's served with crushed black pepper)

For a technically flavorless vodka, Karlsson's has a ton of flavor. I had some last night in a 2:1 Martini with Imbue vermouth and a dash of Angostura Orange bitters- my first vodka martini in eons.

Many vodka companies today are putting out very refined, smooth, subtle and supple products for vodka drinkers. Karlsson's is almost the opposite of that, an in-your-face, meaty vodka for people who normally dismiss the category as catering to people who don't like the taste of alcohol. There's no missing the flavor in Karlsson's.

September 22, 2011