Water of Life, Beverage of Death, Pride of the Slavs

One of the weirdest drink in my mind is vodka. It basically tastes like nothing, but the burn inside your throat. But it is the most popular alcoholic beverage in Poland, Russia and other Eastern European countries.I never get it why the Russians love it so much that they even name it water of life.Then I looked it up, turns out "Vodka" in slavic language is a morphism of "woda" or "voda"[1], rings the bell right? But knowing the lingustics doesnt give us the history, in fact, scholars have been debating the beginnings of vodka.It is a contentious issue because very little historical material is available.[2]

But at least, we get to know its science. Vodka is a clear spirit which can be produced from anything containing starch or sugar,which is often called a neutral grain spirit because the standard method for making it is by fermenting and distilling grain, which could be corn, rye, wheat, or any other grain. Other bases for vodka include beets and grapes. That it is often distilled at least three times, though some are distilled five or more times.[3]

To understand why vodka can be made from grains, we must take a closer look at fermentation. Fermentation is a metabolic process that produces chemical changes in organic substrates through the action of enzymes. To be precise in our case, yeasts are used during the process. For every glucose molecule a yeast has consumed, two ethanol molecules will be produced accordingly. Where does the glucose come from? Well, for corn, rye, wheat and even potato, most of the sugars are in the form of sucrose a disaccharide, and starch a polysaccharide that will be further digested to glucose by yeasts through respiration, just like what we do the best.[4]

But in reality, things dont just react solely in the way we want, sometimes, unflavorable reactions do occur. For example, methanol may be produced during the brewing process, which although smell like ethanol, it results you more than a hangover, but permanent blindness. Many people try to brew at home and get blinded because of this side product. Where on the other hand, many metabolic waste of the microbes are also produced inside the brew, giving out sourness and bitterness. So one must distill the vodka serval time to separate different products, according to their solubility and boiling point, one can get the pure ethanol out of methanol, to be the purist, spiciest vodka in the world.[5]

After all this talking, lets end with a recipe of vodka cocktail for vodka haters. It really makes it at least drinkable.

Cosmopolitan

50ml Vodka
7-10ml Fresh Lime Juice
25ml Cointreau
20ml 100% Pure Cranberry juice
*(Dash Rich Syrup) 

Shake well all ingredients, double strain into pre-chilled martini glass.

The cointreau and juice here really smoothen the spiciness of vodka. Turns out vodka only gives a tiny kick here. The little alcohol flavour really lifts up the fruity tastes, making it 100 times better than neat vodka.

Also, here is a little side story of this cocktail.

The Cosmopolitan gained popularity in the 1990s. According to Brian Gougherty, the cosmo was further popularized among young women by its frequent mention on the television program Sex and the City, where Sarah Jessica Parker's character, Carrie Bradshaw, commonly ordered the drink when out with her girlfriends. The film adaptation made a reference to its popularity when Miranda asks why they stopped drinking them, Carrie replies "because everyone else started. [6]



Reference:
[1]CW. Kreidler, Phonology, Critical Concepts in Linguistics, 2011
[2]AF Smith, The Oxford companion to American food and drink. Oxford University Press, 2007
[3]P Wiśniewska, The Analysis of Vodka, Food Analytical Methods, 2015
[4]DE Koshland Jr, Mechanism of Alcoholic Fermentation, JACS, 1950
[5]EI Ohimain, Methanol contamination in traditionally fermented alcoholic beverages: the microbial dimension,Springer Plus, 2016
[6]International Bartenders Association