4 ms·

The Night Watch series books talk about “fake vodka” which I found highly amusing. I assume it’s watered back industrial ethanol?

• trhway 5y ago
  > it’s watered back industrial ethanol usually that is what you hope for. Sometimes the seller would claim that it is off-book ethanol supply from the liquor or medical industry - no way to verify of course. On the very bottom of the range is pretty "dirty" ethanol and even occasionally methanol (couple months ago there were 2 clusters of 80+ such poisonings in the regional cities in Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_methanol_poisoning_incidents#Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_methanol_poisoning_inc...), though you usually don't venture that low. In a smaller cities and of course villages you'll also meet moonshine. Once back then we bought in a normal store in a small town several 1L jars of what happened to be moonshine which had their wide mouths capped with single use cap - i.e. you open the jar and consume it :) Which is what we (me and 2 crewmates) did with the head of local police and the driver of our loaded (~10 tons of construction supplies) truck while waiting for the ferry to take the truck and us across the river - to say honestly, as the jar at the ferry crossing wasn't the only one, we lost the truck that day and found it couple days later missing about 10% of the cargo :)
  • wildzzz 5y ago
    Where I went to college, moonshine is a big thing and is relatively easy to get once you know some locals. I've tried it multiple times and it was always absolutely vile. It would usually come in a reused plastic milk jug. There was nothing you could mix it with and not taste the horrible flavor. I had a friend who made his own stovetop still and despite it probably being slightly poisoned with methanol, it actually kind of tasted like a corn whiskey. I don't know how he was able to make something palatable but every backwoods moonshine maker in the area couldn't manage to make something that didn't taste like gasoline. Whenever I was going to a party where I knew there would be plenty of moonshine, I'd just bring my own legal liquor.
    • ethbr0 5y ago
      Depends on who makes it and their skill. I've tried stuff from TN that's at or better than mid-tier commercially sold vodka. I also have an undiluted jar from a friend as a birthday present at 180 proof. Surprisingly, it's entirely drinkable, with essentially no aftertaste.
      • User23 5y ago
        I had some NC moonshine back when. The first sip was pretty intense, but I think it basically numbed the alcohol detecting part of my taste because after that it just tasted a little sweet.
• jandrewrogers 5y ago
  Normal vodka is diluted industrial ethanol. A very diverse range of spirits are bottled from the same train tanker cars of industrial ethanol, optionally adulterated with flavoring and coloring. I used to have friends that ran a bottling plant for state-wide distribution of several hundred well-known brands. All of their alcohol came from ADM in bulk. Not all spirits are produced this way but the vast majority are. The quality of the ethanol stock is essentially identical.
  • fsckboy 5y ago
    where are you talking about? Russia? US?
    • jandrewrogers 5y ago
      The US, but most other countries are similar.
    • dredmorbius 5y ago
      U.S. of 'Murica. S.F. Bay Area, no less. Frank-Lin Distillers. Animats's description is a classic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9059821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9059821 Several other times: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3AAnimats%20frank-lin&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... I've dug into them as well: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/bztu6ot3xumpeiiiygdzaa https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/bztu6ot3xumpeiiiygdzaa