How is vodka made?
□ Compiled by our reporter Bai Yang
As we all know, the Russian state budget has three main sources: two of them are liquids and one is gas. It is not difficult to guess that the gas refers to natural gas. So what are the two liquids? It's oil and vodka. Harvest Brewing Co., Ltd., located in the village of Nikolay-Arkhangelsk, Balashzin District, Moscow Region, is an emerging enterprise in the Russian national wine industry. The reporter of "Arguments and Facts" found the secret of vodka brewing technology here.
This is a modern brewery that is heavily guarded, as if it were a military base. It is surrounded by high concrete walls covered with spiral wire. An external camera is mounted on the wall. Under the wall are guards wearing "Amon" special combat uniforms, with faces full of stage struggles. Unlike the Soviet era, it’s amazing that not a single drunkard was found here. This is because the winery’s employee selection system is very strict, comparable to the selection of astronauts.
"In 1991, at the beginning of the establishment of our company," company manager Gennady Grebenik said, "It was such a situation: in the morning we recruited 20 employees, and in the evening 18 people were fired. Because they were all very drunk. Those who did not drink make up our collective today."
Vodka brewing requires alcohol
The ingredients of vodka are ethane and water. However, this is not a random mixture of H2O (water) and C2H5OH (ethyl), and not all alcohol plus water can have the proud name of vodka. According to the all-Russian national technical inspection standards, the intensity of vodka should be between 40 and 60 degrees, no more and no less. Today's breweries rarely produce alcohol themselves, but purchase it from specialized companies. The advantage of this is that the cost is lower.
The mixing process of alcohol and water is accompanied by the release of heat. Therefore, the safety measures in the blending workshop are no less than those in the gunpowder factory. Even the lighting was dim: alcohol is known to not only knock you out when you drink too much, it also burns easily. In addition, alcohol has strong odor-absorbing properties. Therefore, it is strictly prohibited to bring strong-smelling substances and foods into the workshop.
If you think that vodka is made by mixing 40% alcohol and 60% water, then you are totally wrong. After blending in this proportion, the resulting material is called a "blank". After that, there is a more important brewing process, which is the purification process. The purification process is carried out in a cylindrical carbon cylinder. This cylindrical carbon tube resembles a medium-range ballistic missile in a silo. As the name suggests, the cylindrical carbon cylinder is filled with activated charcoal (the raw material is white birch and must be knot-free, usually priced at 60,000 rubles per ton), and the carbon cylinder completes the final filtration process before packaging.
Several processes on the sub-packaging line
Eight years ago, many vodka bottles had strange cane-like tips on their mouths. Among the people, this kind of wine bottle is called "convenient mouth", while hotel waiters and purchasing and sales personnel call it "meter". The vodka producer who knows his product best revealed the secret: this is a method from Italy, called "Guard Spout". "Gual" was the name of an Italian company that first used this bottle spout, and now it has become a common noun along with photocopying ("Xerox") and "zeppelin" (Zipparin airship) .
Capping is one of the last processes on the packaging line. The wine bottles moved forward one by one in a "single file", making a clear clinking sound like the one heard on the wine table. Next comes the processes of drying, bottling, capping, sealing, and boxing. Now you're done.
This seems to be the standard production process of Russian classical vodka. Modern premium vodka may have an extra step of purification using milk. Some 40-proof vodkas are soaked with lemon, black beans and Siberian wild fruits. In this case, several additional procedures are needed in the brewing process.
For example, if you want to add a few small peppers to a bottle, this process cannot be automated.
Vodka’s great contribution to Russia
Every evening, in all legal vodka production lines, representatives of the Internal Revenue Service affix the words "State Tax Service of the Russian Federation" to the bottles. 's trademark. Since the time of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, the state's attitude towards vodka producers has always been cautious.
In the stagnation era of the Soviet Union, the price of a liter of alcohol was 61 kopecks, an empty bottle - 10 kopecks, a trademark - 5 kopecks, and a bottle cap - 1.5 kopecks. The price of a bottle of vodka, if you remember, is divided into 2.87 rubles, 3.62 rubles and 4.12 rubles. The state makes a profit of 2 rubles and 70 kopecks for every bottle of vodka sold. The Soviet Union used this money to build the Belt and Road Railway and send Yuri Gagarin into space. From then to now, things have changed. However, the dependence of the state budget on vodka has not changed.
Nowadays, each legal vodka manufacturer makes a net profit of about 1 ruble to 1.5 rubles for each bottle of wine sold. The tax on each bottle of vodka adds 24 rubles and 56 kopecks to the state treasury. Russia officially produces about 1.3 billion liters of vodka every year. The total state budget expenditure in 2002 was 1,947.386 billion rubles. If you do the math, you will know how huge vodka’s contribution is to Russia.
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