Vodka Flashcards
Origin
Northern Europe and Russia
About
highly rectified
non-congenric
relatively pure solution of ethanol
Styles
Eastern European ( stronger perceptible but still subtle character)
Russian - cleaner tasting
Produce?
From fermented mash of cereals ( barley and wheat) , sometimes rye, buckwheat, maize or millet
non-cereal based fermentations of hydrolysed potato starch or molasses
Defn
EU - fermented by yeast using potato and or or cereal
distilled to reduce organoleptic charac
min 37.5% and only those flavour compounds obtained from distillate maybe added ( Geographical indicator with respect to finland, sweden, lithuanian etc
Russia - colourless water-alcohol liq 40/45/50/56% with typical flavour and aroma
Fermentation
cereal based ( tye, wheat, barley ) OR potato ( potato starch has 12-22% fermentable substrate)
amylolytic enzymes by malted barley or exogenously
smaller variations observed with batch fermentation but happen more often and are bad
hence, continous cascade fermentation is used instead of more traditional batch process.
Methods of fermentation
- Continous cascade fermentation
2. Tower method of continous fermentation
Cascade adv
- increased productuvity
- reducing emptying cleaning and refilling
Cascade disadv
- increased susceptibility to bacterial and wild yeast contamination
- cont ethanol yield reduction
Tower method
cont pumped into a bioreactor
uses high flocculant yeast to form a plug
HIGHLY PRONE TO BACTERIAL INFECTION
Distillation
GNS spirit dist - carefully handle and store to avoid taints
Tankers should have a cleaning certificare
Acrivated charcoal to be removed to remove trace congeners
low congeners ( <1g/l) and mostly only ethyl ester terpenoids
essentially flavourless but may contain light flavourings with fruits or botanicals
Distillation technique `
Continous column dist
triple filtration throughout the charcoal beds commonly practices to ensure that congener level is low
( see triple column dist diagram - slides and explaination)
