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Re: Double-Blind Vodka Taste Test

It's your own damn link. Read at the bottom:

http://www.russianlife.com/vodka/ranking.cfm

Re: Double-Blind Vodka Taste Test

I have a bottle of Chopin in my fridge , i think i will drink one tonight in honor of wookie

Re: Double-Blind Vodka Taste Test

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrWookie (Post 17360278)

It's your own damn link. Read at the bottom:

http://www.russianlife.com/vodka/ranking.cfm

Yes for 40 people tasting 17 vodkas...same organizers are clearly stating that best results are achieved with chilled product.

Re: Double-Blind Vodka Taste Test

what the sites you were posting was saying that you should enjoy vodka served chilled. we all agree with that. vodka tastes best chilled. what we are saying is that it is more difficult to distinguish between vodkas when chilled, so to provide more consistent and accurate results, taste tests should be done at a warmer (than usual) temperature so as to magnify any differences in taste.

Re: Double-Blind Vodka Taste Test

Quote:

Originally Posted by 3rdCheckRaise (Post 17360426)

Yes for 40 people tasting 17 vodkas...same organizers are clearly stating that best results are achieved with chilled product.

Maximum enjoyment for drinking a vodka straight, sure, drink it chilled, but they sure claim that their rankings are perfectly transferable even when the test is done at room temp.

Re: Double-Blind Vodka Taste Test

Quote:

Get yourself a nice 2-3 oz., clear glass. Pop in in the freezer for an hour. Then pour in a healthy shot of your frozen vodka. Let the vodka warm up just very slightly, holding the glass in your hand. This will take just a bit of the freeze off it. If vodka is too cold, it will freeze your taste buds and you will not get an adequate tasting. If it is too warm, the flavor mix becomes too complex and the dominant flavor less discernible.

my interpretation of this is that it's talking about personal enjoyment, not a scientific test. everyone ITT agrees that vodka tastes best chilled. it's just not the best way to do a scientific test.

Re: Double-Blind Vodka Taste Test

Quote:

Originally Posted by dukemagic (Post 17360478)

my interpretation of this is that it's talking about personal enjoyment, not a scientific test. everyone ITT agrees that vodka tastes best chilled. it's just not the best way to do a scientific test.

I'm with this, seems kind of lame if everything was equal with the tasting then that's how it went and these are the results

Re: Double-Blind Vodka Taste Test

Wookie/All,

Dude actually has a pretty valid point. If you're only going to be drinking vodka chilled, or vodka with soda and ice, or whatever, then the "which vodka tastes best when sipped at room temperature" is a somewhat pointless taste test.

Making a couple of similar analogies to the ones he made, let's say that you can get the most accurate taste of coffee flavors in a cup of room temperature coffee. That taste test might tell us which coffee has the best flavor in some "absolute flavor" sense or something. But really the only relevant result to me is which coffee tastes best to me served hot. If I only use sweet vermouth for making manhattans, then I don't really care which sweet vermouth tastes best sipped alone. I care which one tastes best in a manhattan.

Re: Double-Blind Vodka Taste Test

Quote:

Originally Posted by dukemagic (Post 17360478)

my interpretation of this is that it's talking about personal enjoyment, not a scientific test. everyone ITT agrees that vodka tastes best chilled. it's just not the best way to do a scientific test.

It is product that you using only for personal enjoyment and there is nothing "scientific" about any of those tastings anyway since they are based on subjective opinion of the participants. Look, if i'll put together a group of 7 graders and make them taste wine they will most likely rate $7 semi-sweet or sweet wines much higher then vintage expensive wine. Well you getting same type of results when you make people who think that vodka "taste like ****" taste vodka.

Re: Double-Blind Vodka Taste Test

Posting ITT because its more appropriate than the Faux Class thread. I think this is an interesting topics.

I did a blind taste test between Pinnacle Vodka and Smirnoff last night and I administered the test to my wife as well. We both picked Pinnacle Vodka over Smirnoff. I am looking forward to expanding this test to some top shelf vodka's that I have not tried yet as well as some of my favorites (Tito's, Ciroc etc).

IMO: Smirnoff has a much more odor and a slightly harsher bite. This might be what critics define as "classic." For me its not desirable as I am looking for something that is pretty much neutral and transparent for mixed drinks. I am not sure if this is from the potato distillation rather than other sources of sugar for alcohol production.

Smirnoff has always made me very hung over after drinking a bunch of it. The only other decent alcohol I have problems with bad hangovers is rum and I actively avoided drinking smirnoff for a long time as a result. I was surprised to hear that it has very little impurities because I always assumed that it was a lack of quality that caused me to be ill afterwords. Very similar to drinking low quality vodkas such as Popoff.

This also reminded me of the thread from years back where guys were filtering cheap vodka through charcoal filters and doing taste comparisons vs top shelf. I searched and think it must be in the 2+2 archives now but I'll keep looking for a link.

zero

Re: Double-Blind Vodka Taste Test

This is the basic idea for the 5x brita filtering

http://food-worthy.com/?p=1459

The only thread I found in the archives was not as extensive as I remembered.

zero

Re: Double-Blind Vodka Taste Test

Anyone ever try Sobieski vodka? Extremely good vodka for the money imo. This has been pretty much the only vodka I've been buying of late. Scores very well in taste tests that I've read and it's only about $12 for a 1L bottle.

http://www.lasplash.com/uploads/gift...5_image_01.jpg

Re: Double-Blind Vodka Taste Test

Bump for an update.

Quote:

Originally Posted by .Alex. (Post 9635659)

Would have liked to see some more popular brands like Skyy, Stoli, Absolut, and Ketel One, but I guess you can only drink so much vodka before the exercise becomes pointless. Interesting results.

Quote:

Originally Posted by liquidboss (Post 9635708)

This kind of stuff usually cracks me up. I'm glad you and your friends aren't "vodka snobs" but it is funny when you get someone who only drinks Grey Goose or something and they find out it is their least favorite when in a blind test.

It's also interesting that Smirnoff is usually pretty high in these taste tests but almost always loses out to Ketel One, Grey Goose, and the like with the snobs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by J.A.Sucker (Post 9636049)

a bunch of Russians and I did one of these recently. Grey goose was everyone's least favorite. Smirnov was universally the best. Second place was a bottle smuggled in from Moscow. Third was stoli. Ketel absolut and one other were about even. Two take home messages from our experiment: all were drinkable except the goose, which tasted like varnish; we were shocked that smirnov was the unanimous fav-it and the bootleg Russian one were a notch better than the others.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadowrun (Post 9641018)

I really like Ketel One so I would like to see that in a test. Stoli is the only vodka that has made me throw up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MatthewRyan (Post 9652639)

so would Ketel be my best choice when out at a club then?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hey_Porter (Post 9678743)

I tried Ketel One on the rocks a couple weeks ago and REALLY enjoyed it after being prepared to hate it, or at the very least not think much of it. Now I think it's something I might actually order at a bar. There is still no way I order it in a mixed drink, though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by z28dreams (Post 12750250)

Here's a test I recently did.

13 people, 7 vodkas.

The method was very scientific, with everyone receiving cups labeled A-G. Additionally, everyone had a random vodka in cup A, so people would not be able to compare with each other. I also made some slight tweaks to the ordering in an attempt to evenly distribute the vodkas in the #1 position (since the first vodka tasted would tend to get a lower rating)

Lower score = better. Overall, Ketel One was the clear winner, with Luksusowa being easily the worst. (this was the potato vodka). Everything else pretty much ended up being similar. I'm pretty disappointed that Luksusowa didn't do too well. I suppose it's possible that because it was a potato based vodka it may have just tasted very different than the others which threw people off. I would like to see Chopin and other high-end potato vodkas matched up later.

Complete breakdown here:

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g1...-results-1.jpg

As you can see, there were some vodkas that everyone liked, while others had a huge preference gap (see Nikolai - for $7.30 a bottle, over half of the people put in in their top 3)

Here were my personal results:

1 ketel one - overall, was smooth and finished with a sweet taste
2 svedka - i remember this being just very neutral and flavorless
3 tanqueray - the next 3 all were pretty similar to me, and probably could have gone in any order
4 smirnoff
5 luksusowa
6 nikolai - this had a very strong taste/smell of rubbing alcohol to me
7 gray goose - this had a very foul/bitter/just bad taste to me

Overall, the difference in scores from #2-#6 probably isn't statistically significant. For me, Svedka was the clear winner in terms of bang for the buck. Smirnoff and Tanqueray were both very strong contenders for good choices for big groups.

For those looking to do their own test, I have these suggestions:
- Do less vodkas. I think around 5 would be the right number. It got very difficult to go back and forth with 7 of them.
- The randomization of cups I think helped prevent people from biasing each other
- You don't need much in each cup - around 1/3 of a shot seemed to be enough to give people 2-3 sips.
- Have lots of mixers for afterwards!

I may try to do some 1-on-1 matchups later with the higher ranked vodkas to see if I can better distinguish my favorites.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrWookie (Post 12752599)

z,

Sweet follow up. Your scores are just the summed rankings, right? I'm surprised that you had much less discrepancy in your scoring than we did in our test.

What were the general demographics of your group? Like, what was the mix of men and women, vodka lovers and people who'd never drink vodka straight except in the name of science, stiff drinkers and girly drink drinkers, etc.? Was it pretty well mixed, or did you skew one way or another?

I guess the big surprise for me is that your group seemed to like Grey Goose much more than we did. I don't think any of us rated Grey Goose first, and yet you had three people who did. What's also interesting is how few people hated the Smirnoff. It had the fewest people rank it 6th or 7th of any vodka, even if it didn't fare as well on the top.

It looks like Ketel One may have been a poor omission on my part. I was deciding between Hangar One and Ketel One, and I picked the former. Hanger One wasn't really a disappointment, just overpriced, but Ketel One might have been more competitive. I've never had Tanq vodka, but only scoring a point more than Smirnoff and yet costing $5 more for a liter, I'll probably pass.

Quote:

Originally Posted by z28dreams (Post 12753205)

Yes, people weren't asked to score the vodkas, but rather only rank them. Maybe it would have been better to do this. Also, I included the raw data in this post so people could weight the results as they see fit. (For example, it may make sense to heavily penalize any vodka that ends in the bottom 3 and give a bonus to any in the top 3). In my own results, the top and bottom 2 stood out, but everything in the middle was pretty close.

I was also very surprised at how close the scoring was on anything. I'm starting to wonder if the tests you and others have done have a lot more to do with variance. 13 people is a pretty big sample size, but I do think using 7 vodkas was too much for people to handle and be able to easily compare.

The group was pretty mixed. Age range 23 - 35.
2 people = hardly drink at all
4 girls, mostly mixed drinks
The guys in the group were all pretty heavy drinkers, but usually prefer beer over liquor.

Oddly, the 100% polish guy in our group who has had tons of vodka in his lifetime chose Nikolai ($7.30) as his #1.

Yup - I noticed this too. While Smirnoff may not have been the resounding favorite, I think there's something to be said about any vodka that rarely finishes in the bottom 3. I think for the price it makes it the perfect vodka for most uses.

Gray Goose shocked me too. In my own preferences, it was the worst, and it wasn't even close. The 4 who put it in the top 2 positions were a guy that never drinks, a girl that never drinks, and a couple who loves martinis. ?!?

So, overall, I would say that some of the novice drinkers seemed to prefer GG.

The funny thing was I wasn't going to include Ketel One, but I had over 5 people ask me to include it in the test, so I decided to do it. Glad I did. The only vodka I'm a little mad I didn't test was Chopin - it would have been nice to see a potato vodka finish highly.

After the results of this first test, it was abundantly clear that one of the glaring omissions was Ketel One. We couldn't test everything, and some things had to miss the cut, but Ketel One is a brand that a number of people in this forum believed in and thought would stand out. It even beat Smirnoff in z28's follow up test that he did with his friends.

There was never much interest in retesting vodka with my friends, and I don't drink much vodka. If I buy vodka, I usually buy a handle of Smirnoff or Sobieski (some guy mentioned that late in this thread. I did test it double-blind heads up against Smirnoff with my then-girlfriend-now-wife. We gave the slightest of nods to Smirnoff, but Sobieski's lower price makes it a solid buy) that I'm probably going to just use as a base for infusing my homemade liqueurs. I wasn't about to splurge on anything more expensive than that just for science when I wouldn't reach for that bottle often. However, today the Safeway near me had a sweet promotion going on where you could get a whopping $40 off 6 bottles of certain kinds of liquor and wine, one of which was Ketel One, and one of which was Smirnoff. The stars aligned. My wife and I decided to take the plunge, getting one of each in our six pack, so we could test these two head to head.

As in the initial test, we decided to try the vodka at room temperature and neat so that things would be comparable. I randomized the vodka that went into two pairs of glasses, and she randomized which we tried first. We each sampled each vodka before discussing our opinion of either with the other. But after trying both side by side (getting to go back and forth between the two), we conferred on our opinion of each and revealed the identities of the vodkas. We both agreed that Ketel One straight crushed. It was markedly smoother, and it had a pleasant hint of sweetness and a flavor I could taste but couldn't really put my finger on what it was. It won't turn me into a vodka drinker, at least not when bourbon is available, and Smirnoff and Sobieski will still be my most common purchases. But if you do happen to be a primarily vodka drinker and don't mind shelling out a little more for better stuff, Ketel One is now two for two in battles against Smirnoff that have been recorded in this thread.

Re: Double-Blind Vodka Taste Test

The real test of vodka isn't taste but hangover intensity - since as noted itt - no one really drinks vodka for the taste.

I'm no vodka expert – but for 10 years gin & tonic was my choice of drink when in a bar. I was convinced that Sapphire gave me less of a hangover than well gin - but it's been so long that I'm willing to concede it might have been all in my head.

Quote:

Originally Posted by suzzer99 (Post 41838808)

Could that not be something as simple as you are having 8 sapphires for the price of 10 well gins?

But yeah, gin. Mmm mm.

Re: Double-Blind Vodka Taste Test

With hangover intensity depending in no small part on one's hydration level, it's way too hard to do a controlled study focusing on that, I think. Plus, I'm in no mood to give myself 10 hangovers just to test out 10 vodkas.

Re: Double-Blind Vodka Taste Test

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrWookie (Post 41837768)

But after trying both side by side (getting to go back and forth between the two), we conferred on our opinion of each and revealed the identities of the vodkas. We both agreed that Ketel One straight crushed. It was markedly smoother, and it had a pleasant hint of sweetness and a flavor I could taste but couldn't really put my finger on what it was. It won't turn me into a vodka drinker, at least not when bourbon is available, and Smirnoff and Sobieski will still be my most common purchases. But if you do happen to be a primarily vodka drinker and don't mind shelling out a little more for better stuff, Ketel One is now two for two in battles against Smirnoff that have been recorded in this thread.

This is definitely why I think Ketel won in my tasting. I don't think it's entirely fair though, because I feel like vodka should be flavorless. If the sweetness just happens to come from their distillation process or type of grain, then I suppose it's fair to compare. If they are adding in some kind of sweetener/flavor though, then I feel like they are cheating.

For example, one of my favorite vodkas is Zubrowka (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BBubr%C3%B3wka), but it's flavored so I can't really count it.

Re: Double-Blind Vodka Taste Test

Titos and Smirnoff are my go to vodkas

Re: Double-Blind Vodka Taste Test

I'm pretty sure they're legally not allowed to market it as vodka (without calling it flavored vodka) if they're adding flavors after the fact. There are a lot of laws that govern spirits like that.

Re: Double-Blind Vodka Taste Test

Wookie,

I'd love to see the results of you and your wife doing this format taste test with those two and one more vodka: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/34...ssion-1256150/

Re: Double-Blind Vodka Taste Test

has anyone tried napa vodka? it's vintaged wheat/sauv blanc vodka. would be interested in hearing impressions, want to try it but can only get cases to here. :(