I hate you. I hate you so much. Oh God, I'm going to puke.\ Laura Manson, a close friend of mine and a UW-Madison junior, had just taken her second shot of vodka and was looking a bit… ill.
I admit, deep inside I was feeling slightly guilty. Was this vodka experiment really worth forcing participants to take three shots of raw vodka without a legitimate chaser?
Then I had a flashback. It's my freshman year and I'm drinking Fleischmann's vodka, desperately praying that the warmth spreading through my body isn't my internal organs shutting down. I vowed I would never taste vodka that bad again, and if a Brita filter and my friends' agony was going to help keep that promise, then so be it.
I quickly poured Laura another round of vodka before she could flee to the bathroom or attack me.
""Who's next?"" I asked Laura's nervous-looking roommates.
The background of
liquid alchemy
For those with long memories, the mention of Brita filters and vomiting participants bears a striking resemblance to a prior article. About a year ago I borrowed an idea from www.ohmygoditburns.com and tried to prove that filtering Fleischmann's vodka through a Brita filter would improve the taste.
Twenty participants did a blind taste test, and 17 out of the 20 preferred filtered Fleischmann's over unfiltered Fleischmann's. Once word got around that a Brita filter could improve awful vodka, websites raced to replicate the study. Even ""Mythbusters,"" the popular show on the Discovery Channel, tested this one out (Episode 50).
The general consensus from all these varied experts? Filtered vodka tastes better than unfiltered vodka. So, that's it, right? Why perform a second experiment if the first was such a success? Because for every experiment that proved that filtered vodka was better than unfiltered vodka, one unanswered questioned remained: Just how good is filtered vodka?
Let's be blunt. Fleischmann's vodka sucks. For a $12 bottle, you get exactly what you paid for: fiery, crap vodka that leaves you with a wicked hangover. So, saying students like filtered vodka better than unfiltered vodka is like bragging that you can outrun Steven Hawking.
So I set out to prove that filtered vodka is good. Not just ""better than unfiltered"" good. We're talking ""as good as any premium vodka"" good. No.1 party school good. Chuck Norris good.
Hypothesis
Filtered will not only outperform unfiltered vodka, but will also outperform or match a premium vodka in taste and quality.
Materials
The experiment set up was similar to the one I did in 2005. I filled two identical canisters with two types of Fleischmann's vodka. The first container was filled with unfiltered, flesh-searing Fleischmann's vodka. The second canister held Fleischmann's that was filtered three times through a new Brita filter.
However, this time I filled a third canister with premium, high-end vodka. In this experiment I decided to use Chopin, an award-winning vodka that is consistently ranked in the top five vodkas in the world.
""But Jason,"" people will moan. ""Grey Goose is the best!""
No it's not. Many of the vodka experts, bartenders and hobos I talked to agreed that the quality (and price) of Grey Goose has been vastly overinflated. Even six vodka snobs on ABC's ""20/20"" recently ranked Grey Goose as the worst vodka they had ever tasted. And so, Chopin was in, Grey Goose was out.
Procedure
I recruited (begged) 20 hapless victims to participate in the experiment after they agreed to the ground rules. First, all participants had to be completely sober so they could taste the differences in vodka quality. Secondly, all participants had to be 21.
Each participant received three shots, one of each kind of vodka. The order of the shots was completely randomized and even I couldn't tell which vodka the participants were drinking until after the experiment was over.
After the first shot, each participant ranked the shot on a scale of 1 to 10. A ""1"" indicated the vodka was absolutely awful while a ""10"" indicated the participant loved the vodka. After their first shot I had the participants gargle some water and relax for a minute. Then, I had them take the second and third shot using the same process.
Results
The results speak for themselves. On average, the 20 participants ranked the unfiltered Fleischmann's vodka as a 4.3 out of 10 (median: 4). As expected, the participants ranked the filtered Fleischmann's higher than the unfiltered vodka, giving the filtered vodka an average score of 5.7 out of ten (median: 6).
Now for the shocker: The participants gave the Chopin an almost identical score to the filtered vodka, ranking the premium vodka as a 5.5 out of 10 on average (median: 6).
Analysis
This is a huge moral victory for broke alcohol drinkers everywhere. Filtered vodka still tasted better than unfiltered vodka, and participants liked the filtered Fleischmann's vodka just as much as the premium quality liquor. This is like David beating Goliath, or at least like David getting Goliath to drop the whole fight-to-the-death thing and take vodka shots together. With no discernable difference in taste between filtered and high-end vodka, it makes little sense to pay so much more money for the higher-quality brand.
Of course, there are alternative explanations for the results. College students might not be able to tell the difference between Chopin and Fleischmann's because of limited experience with premium vodkas.
Regardless, it seems that a pretty bottle is the only real difference between the two types of vodka. Both the filtered and top-end vodkas are going to have fewer impurities, leaving you with less of a hangover in the morning, and both are going to burn less regardless of whether you're sipping on a martini or doing body shots.
Conclusions
It appears as though the Brita filter is still the cheapest way to convert bottles of burning awfulness into a top competitor. And while this research isn't advancing stem cell research or curing Alzheimer's, if it prevents a single person from ever having to drink raw Fleischmann's ever again, then that's a result I can stand behind.
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