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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 going to 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 want to 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 hello at sporkful .com.
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 you're going to enjoy it.
Pour yourself a drink and enjoy.
Quick heads up, there is a little bit of explicit language in this episode.
A while back, I went to a bar called O 'Keeffe's.
It's a standard Irish bar in Brooklyn.
I was there with my friend Alex Goldmark.
Former friend, because you basically picked an argument with me.
Yeah, you're right.
I am telling you it is a real thing that happens just about every time.
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?
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 going to kill me.
I don't buy it. You doubted my own personal claims about my own personal health.
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.
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. It's an honor to be here.
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.
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 chic issue to you, only to be shut down.
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 journalistic rigor.
I was going to say pretend heated rivalry.
Speaking of which, 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 going to age it in certain barrels for a certain amount of time or whatever.
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've got vodka.
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.
Hey, there. Hey, how are you?
Good. How's it going?
Good. This is Ronak Parikh.
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.
and if you imagine plant life living in animal or with fish life uh 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 you're the founder of this company was just playing with aquaponics for fun and accidentally Accidentally made vodka?
Accidentally came across alcohol and spirits and looked at various ways of monetizing as this spirit that was coming off was really damn tasty.
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.
We had a copper still working off of a stove.
We were making, a friend of mine, we were making gins.
And you just made gin, like, for fun for your friends?
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.
Eventually Ronak came to Industry City Distillery and now he's living the dream.
He takes us down a long cluttered hallway past a bar and then unlocks this big metal door.
You're entering our still room now.
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.
Yeah, I mean, there's like enough room for maybe two or three people to be working, basically.
That's it. Yeah, which is about our team.
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.
Pooping alcohol. It's poops, right.
Right, so it's the yeast waste product is what makes us drunk.
Did you know that, Alex?
That's news to me. One man's trash is another man's treasure.
That's right. So when you get drunk, you're essentially poisoning yourself with yeast poop to forget about your problems. There you go.
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? Really, anything can make vodka.
Sugar, exactly. A 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 got to separate the alcohol.
So you heat the mixture just to the point where the alcohol turns to steam and rises up.
So it goes up. It rises the 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 got to get that back to a liquid state in order to make it potable so you can forget about your problems. 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.
So these machines here, the main purpose of them is to remove flavor and scent and any other characteristic except for alcohol.
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 this vodka is 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 Ronak, are you ready for the lightning round?
Sure I'm gonna 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.
OK, I like this. All right, here we go.
Filtered through champagne limestone.
That sounds fancy. That does sound fancy, doesn't it?
That really. Now, what the heck does filtering 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 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? Charcoal filtered.
That's typically what you see in 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.
it but again you were masking something there crafted in an old -fashioned pot still 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 pot still.
I really don't know what that means.
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, really important and really, really good and efficient at distilling and making spirits.
So again, Alex, the raw raw material doesn't matter to the final flavor.
There is no flavor.
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.
Three categories, heads, hearts, and tails.
Heads, hearts, and tails.
Okay, Roenick 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.
It's the stuff that can contain methanol, all, the stuff that moonshiners are getting in trouble with, going blind, even being fatally hurt by it.
You don't want to drink your heads.
You want to remove that.
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 the last part is your tails, okay?
That's the stuff that's potable, but stuff that's been in our industry, we're known to give you hangovers.
It can create some nasty smells, some aromas.
So in theory, isolate the hearts, get rid of the heads and tails.
And then when When the vodkas run through the still a second time, you start with only the heart and then isolate the hearts of the hearts.
So if a vodka is 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.
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 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.
Maybe. I like Ronak.
He seems like a great guy.
But remember, he's selling vodka for $40 a bottle.
So I don't think he's going to say that his is just the same as the $10 stuff on the bottom shelf.
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.
Yep, yep, that's true.
He says that is because a lot of vodka labels don't distill their own alcohol.
They buy it in bulk from somebody else.
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.
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, you know, by the Colorado rap.
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 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.
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 going to be better than Grey Goose.
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.
I see what you're doing.
I mean, yeah, back at the Palace of Versailles, I hear that the vodka flowed all day and night.
Just keep going. The stage is yours.
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. Okay. 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 a quintessentially French beverage.
You are making your point well.
Let's get real, Alex. Grey Goose was invented in the 90s by a college dropout from Connecticut.
Sidney Frank, he is a classic American businessman in almost a cliche, both in good ways and in bad ways.
It's 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.
This is Matthew Latkowitz.
I'm a drink writer and the author of You Suck at Drinking.
So how many drinks do you have a day on average?
Well, I'm trying to cut back.
When I was at the height of my drink writing powers, oh gosh, five to eight.
We are such amateurs.
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.
He doesn't love liquor necessarily.
He's 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.
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.
Which probably explains the low sales.
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.
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.
He sponsors parties.
He butters up bartenders.
He even sets up a team of scantily clad women to give away free shots.
Yep. Yeah, they're called the Jägerettes.
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.
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.
And at the time, the fanciest vodka around was Absolute 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 Absolute, of course.
It is the price. He essentially out of thin air goes, I want to make a vodka.
So Absolute's charging $15.
I'll charge $30. He didn't even have a product at this point.
But he already knows he's going to charge double.
And in order to do that, he needs a product that screams luxury.
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 I can make vodka.
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 Goo seem different from other vodkas.
He would give them the bottle in these wooden box with straw inside, and nicely packed in 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.
It's not that he didn't care about taste at all.
It's just that he didn't start there.
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 early 90s thing.
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.
He sold Grey Goose to Bacardi less than 10 years after he started it for more than $2 billion.
And before you even start on this, Dan— I'm tempted to start, Alex. I see how this whole story argues 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.
I agree, Alex, and I got good news.
Guess what just arrived in the mail?
The vodka concentrate I ordered from Ultra Pure.
Oh, boy. 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 don't even think I even brought my inhaler.
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Welcome back to a Sporkful reheat.
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In Apple Podcasts and Spotify, go to our show page and click follow.
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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. 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 going to be excited about.
Ultra Pure sells a vodka concentrate made in France with French wheat four times distilled.
That sounds pretty good.
I'd even say it sounds like it could be the best, the best that comes from France.
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?
And four -time distilled sounds good to me, maybe even premium?
I would go so far as to call it super premium.
Alex, and that's what we're going to do right now.
We're going to make our own super premium vodka.
To clarify, Grey Goose is distilled only once, not four times.
I don't know. This looks 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 kind of homemade, though, Dan.
Yes, they look like they were printed on somebody's inkjet printer.
Yeah, but not even with the right alignment because alcohol sort of falls off the end.
Yeah, they're cut off.
Okay, well, our vodka company is off to a good start.
We've got this very handy, fancy, highly scientific graduated cylinder that Planet Money owns going back to our story on class action lawsuits.
suits. Here comes the part of this entire story that I have most been dreading.
What? Math. 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 got to bring those down to 80 proof by adding water.
Okay. It's 192 proof.
So if we have to make...
This is hard because we have our intern here, Aviva.
Happy to be here. And she's got a calculator.
This is not 100%. I'm going to tell you how this math works.
If this was 100 %— Then we need to have 83 .333.
No, no, no. Kenny's the math major.
Listen. Let's get Kenny in here.
Kenny's on deadline.
So, Kenny, we heard you're a math major.
We have a math question for you.
Which is 190, 200 mL of 80 -proof vodka.
All right. How many mL is this?
Well, we're going to pour it in here.
Okay. 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?
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 got to test it against something, right, Alex?
Sure, naturally. So we also sent some gray goose in an unmarked bottle.
And we decided to send him some of the cheap stuff, the Alex Special bottom shelf plastic bottle.
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.
Which I think, Alex, is something you and I have been doing for quite some time ourselves.
Especially this week for this episode.
That's right. While the lab runs its tests, please enjoy this musical interlude.
To get our results, we called up Neva Parker.
She's a vice president at White Labs.
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?
They absolutely did.
That's gratifying. 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.
We sent them three bottles with no labels, just a number on them.
Number one was Grey Goose, number two was our homemade French sweet vodka, And number three was the bottom shelf plastic bottle vodka.
And Neva 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.
Typically, when you taste one propanol, that's more of that harsher alcohol, kind of grainy alcohol compound.
Yeah, like nail polish remover.
Right. So the vodka that has more of that stuff is not as good, according to this test. So it's possible that that shows that maybe this product wasn't distilled as many times or distilled to the same amount of purity as the other two, which have lower levels.
Based on that information, Neva, which of these three vodkas would you suspect should be the cheapest, least desirable vodka?
Okay, remember, Grey Goose is number one.
Our homemade vodka is number two.
And the cheap stuff in a plastic bottle is number three.
If I had to choose based on this analysis alone, I would say number one.
And which would be the ultra luxury choice?
Number three. Number three.
So based on these, number three is the best vodka that money can buy of these three.
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.
I mean, look at these.
They all look very similar as well.
So would you say that ours is basically Grey Goose?
Yes, I would. So we basically made Grey Goose.
Wow. We did talk to Grey Goose.
their global brand ambassador, Joe McAnta, took issue with our test. 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.
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.
Every vodka within the category will have its own characteristics, characteristics, which would be largely attributed to the raw materials used to make the spirit or even the process used while distilling the spirit.
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.
But the bottom line for me, science shows that if you don't have an allergy, all vodkas are pretty much the same.
But if you do, there is one last test. All right, Alex, you've moved on to drink number two.
How are you feeling?
I actually do feel the redness coming on.
You're telling me I don't have it?
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 tasteable for most people, maybe not even for you, but that your delicate constitution may be sensitive to them on the inside.
That was a polite way of saying a lot of mean things, but I appreciate that.
And I will take it.
Alex never did turn red that night.
He can't say why. I was a little red.
I was a little red.
Alex Goldmark, my friend from Planet Money.
I always meant to take economics in college, but it always meant Friday mornings at 9 .30 a .m., and so I refused to take it.
And I figured that I would pick up economics 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.
We try to have fun while talking about serious economic topics.
Well, Alex, here's to many more good times drinking, Making sometimes for podcasts, sometimes just for fun.
Take it easy. I look forward to it.
Thanks a lot, Dan. This episode was originally produced by Anne, Sani, 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.
This Porkful is a production of Stitcher.
Our executive producers are Peter Clowney and Daisy Rosario.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
And I'm Christine from Brooklyn, reminding you to eat more, eat better.
And eat more better.
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...
Jared O 'Connell. 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 has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad -free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage.
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It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one.
Right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J.
Fox. There are new episodes out every Thursday, so subscribe, please, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.
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