WalletRehab - Ways to save money

Wow, what an awesome response to my bottled water post. I didn’t realize so many people would see it, and I’m really surprised and grateful to everyone that has posted comments. It has all helped me think more about bottled water, and the water industry as a whole. I will try to address everyone’s comments in due time.

Some people have accused me of deleting comments. I have only deleted the comments that seemed like spam. I’d like to apologize if I accidentally deleted one of yours.

There were a couple of comments about improving vodka with a Brita filter like:

That vodka filtering was tested by Mythbusters, and it was proven to be pretty much untrue. First off you needed to filter it ALOT of times, and buy alot of filters as the vodka ruins them in pretty much 1 filtering.

The cost of doing this is much higher then buying topshelf vodka.

The vodka filtering thing doesn’t really work, ask my alcoholic friend who bought the filter exactly for this purpose…

You can’t filter low vodka to make higher quality. It’s already been proven.

The vodka-filtering is a joke. Vodka as sold in the USSA adheres to higher standards of purity than any water does. Vodka, cheap or otherwise, is ethyl alcohol and water, unless someone decided to flavor it and charge more.

They disproved the “vodka filter” myth on Mythbusters. I know people still do it, I just don’t want people picking it up from this article.

I do enjoy my vodka, and I really do think that you can take a cheap vodka and make some interesting drinks with it while not spending a lot. Please note, that I never wrote that using a Brita will make a cheap vodka “top shelf.”

Flavored Vodkas Make the World Brighter

A couple months ago, I wandered into my favorite watering hole and saw on the shelf a bottle with chili peppers floating in some sort of clear liquid. There was a piece of masking tape wrapped around it as a label, and said label read, “Chili Vodka.” The bartender told me it was something new that they were trying, making flavored vodkas to spice up their lackluster (albeit low-cost, which was why it was my favorite watering hole) shelf of drinks.

He made me a Bloody Mary. I hadn’t had one in a while, and it felt like a drink that might appreciate a little extra fire. I had a couple swigs, and I saw strange colors swirl in front of me. I croaked out, “I can see through time!” as the lights dimmed and brightened in quick succession. I haven’t had one since, but since then I have tried the bar’s subsequent ginger, honey and lemon vodkas. I particularly like the honey vodka with Sprite.

Making your own Flavored or Infused Vodkas

After a while, I thought about how I might make my own flavored vodkas. My chosen poison is some sort of orange flavored vodka (i.e. Absolute Mandarin) and tonic, and after some quick google searches, I discovered that I was looking for infused vodka recipes. And after a couple more searches, I came upon Infusions of Grandeur, the tale of two buddies out to test all sorts of infusion recipes.

More mad scientist than laboratory technicians, mad scienticians Brendan and Wayland list their recipes including every step of the infusion process. They take a lot of pictures of each step of the process, ensuring that neophyte vodka alchemists don’t get lost. But the coolest thing they do, is have tasting parties. I like reading about the reactions people have to their experiments. They are currently working on blueberry, almond and watermelon vodkas.

If I had drunk more in college, I would have tried every recipe that they post.

Infused Vodka Recipes

• Infused-Vodka.com
• Make Martini’s At Home

Filter Cheap Vodka to make it Drinkable

The very first Infusions of Grandeur post describes their vodka development general methodology. It is through here that I discovered Oh My God It Burns!, a website dedicated to using Brita filters to improve the taste of cheap vodka. For their own scientician experiment, they bought the cheapest vodka they could, and a bottle of Ketel One.

They just kept passing the cheap vodka through the Brita filter, and compared it directly to the Ketel One. After three passes through the filter, the cheap vodka compared favorably to the Ketel One. They write:

Coming into this experiment, I had some doubts as to the methodology as well as the subjective manner in which the results would be judged, not to mention a health distrust for anyone who would voluntarily drink Vladimir vodka warm and straight.
Amazingly, though, after the 4th filtration, I came to a startling conclusion: The Filtered vodka tasted better than the control fluid (Ketel One). It was smoother, and had a very delicate aftertaste. Of course, people may claim that it is the aftertaste that is what really gives vodka its flavor, but if you’re drinking Vladimir, I certainly hope you weren’t drinking it for taste!

Filtered Vodka, an urban legend?

With all urban legends and unconfirmed rumors, there really is only one place you can turn, the Mythbusters. In Mythbusters Episode 50, they tested eight different samples of vodkas. The controls were unfiltered low-end and a high end vodkas. The other six samples were samples of the low-end at different levels of filtration.

The tasters were:

• Anthony Dias Blue, vodka expert, executive director San Francisco World Spirits Competion
• Jamie, degree in Russian literature
• Kari, former undercover martini tester

The final Mythbuster’s conclusion was:

Passing a low-end vodka through a filter will make it better, but it won’t make it a top shelf vodka/

A Brita will make a bad vodka better, but it still won’t compare with the top shelf.