How Vodka is Made: From Farm to Flask (The Slightly Educational Version)

Right, so you're drinking vodka, enjoying your evening, when suddenly a thought crosses your mind: "How did this get from a potato/grain/apple into my glass?"

It's a fair question. Most people know that vodka comes from fermented things, and there's distillation involved, and at some point someone decided "yes, this is suitable for human consumption." But the actual process? That's usually where things get hazy.

So here's the complete journey of vodka production, from farm to flask, explained in a way that won't require a chemistry degree to understand. We promise to keep the science bits interesting and the boring bits minimal.

Think of this as the slightly educational version, informative enough that you'll sound knowledgeable at parties, but entertaining enough that you'll actually finish reading it.

Step 1: Choose Your Fighter (The Base Ingredient)

Before you can make vodka, you need something that contains starch or sugar. This is your base ingredient, and it's more important than you might think.

Common options include:

• Grains (wheat, rye, corn, barley)
• Potatoes (the classic choice)
• Grapes (fancy French option)
• Apples (used in Dutch Barn's blend)
• Sugar beets
• Rice
• Quinoa (for the wellness-conscious vodka drinker, apparently)

Different base ingredients produce different flavours and textures, which is why "all vodka tastes the same" is complete nonsense, but we covered that in another blog post so we won't bang on about it here.

At Dutch Barn, we do something unique: we blend apple spirit (made from 100% British apple concentrate) with a touch of redistilled potato spirit. The apple provides natural smoothness and clean character, whilst the potato brings a creamy, velvety mouthfeel. As far as we know, we're the only ones doing this particular combination, and it works brilliantly.

Right, ingredient chosen. Now what?

Step 2: Preparation (Making the Mash)

What happens next depends on whether you're using starchy ingredients (grains, potatoes) or sugar-containing ingredients (fruit, grapes).

For Starchy Ingredients (Grains and Potatoes):

You need to convert the starch into fermentable sugar because yeast can't eat starch. It doesn't work.

The process:

1. Clean everything: Wash your grains or potatoes. Nobody wants dirt-flavoured vodka.
2. Make a mash: Mix your ingredient with hot water (around 150-160°F or 65-70°C). This creates what distillers call a "mash," which looks like porridge and smells... interesting.
3. Add enzymes: These biological catalysts break down the starch molecules and expose the glucose. Think of enzymes as tiny workers with molecular scissors, cutting the starch into bite-sized pieces for the yeast.
4. Heat again: Keep everything at the right temperature so the enzymes can do their job. Too hot and you kill the enzymes. Too cold and they're lazy and don't work properly.

The result is a sweet liquid full of sugar, ready for fermentation.

For Fruit-Based Ingredients (Apples, Grapes):

This is easier. Fruit already contains sugar, so you can skip the whole mashing and enzyme situation.

The process:

1. Prepare the base: For Dutch Barn, we use apple concentrate made from 100% British apples. This gives us consistent quality and flavour whilst supporting British agriculture.
2. Create the fermentable liquid: The concentrate is prepared for fermentation
3. Move directly to fermentation: That's it. You're ready.

This is one reason fruit-based vodkas often produce cleaner spirits, fewer steps mean fewer opportunities for things to develop weird flavours.

Step 3: Fermentation (Where the Magic Happens)

Fermentation is where your sugary liquid becomes alcoholic. This is the bit where science does the heavy lifting and you mostly just wait.

What happens:

You add yeast (usually Saccharomyces cerevisiae, though you don't need to remember that) to your sweet liquid. The yeast thinks it's won the lottery, all this sugar just sitting there, waiting to be consumed.

The yeast eats the sugar and produces:

• Ethanol (alcohol, the good stuff)
• Carbon dioxide (CO₂, the bubbles)
• Heat (because metabolising sugar is hard work)
• Various flavour compounds (depending on the yeast strain and ingredients)

This process takes about 1-2 weeks, though it can vary depending on:

• Temperature (warmer = faster, but potentially more off-flavours)
• Yeast strain (different yeasts work at different speeds)
• Sugar content (more sugar = more work for the yeast)
• The yeast's general mood (not scientifically proven, but we suspect)

The result: You now have a liquid called "wash" or "beer" (though it's not beer you'd want to drink) with about 8-20% alcohol by volume. The yeast has literally worked itself to death, it can't survive in environments above about 20% alcohol, so it essentially chokes on its own success.

Poetic, really.

Step 4: Distillation (The Clever Bit)

Right, here's where things get interesting. You've got your alcoholic wash, but it's only about 16% ABV and full of things you don't want (water, residual sugars, yeast corpses, various flavour compounds ranging from "interesting" to "absolutely not").

Distillation is how you separate the good stuff (ethanol) from everything else.

The science (simplified):

Different liquids boil at different temperatures. Ethanol boils at about 78.4°C (173°F), whilst water boils at 100°C (212°F). This 22-degree difference is your friend.

When you heat the wash, the ethanol vaporises first, rises as vapour, travels through pipes, gets cooled, condenses back into liquid, and gets collected. Meanwhile, most of the water and other stuff stays behind in the still.

Types of stills:

Pot stills – Traditional copper vessels that look like something from a Victorian chemistry lab. They produce spirits with more character because they're less efficient at purifying. We use a traditional pot still with rectification columns at Dutch Barn as part of our process.

Column stills – Tall, continuous distillation systems that can reach very high purity levels. These are efficient and produce consistent results. We also use a modern column still at Dutch Barn.

The Dutch Barn approach: We use both a modern column still and a traditional pot still with rectification columns. This combination gives us the best of both worlds—the efficiency and purity of column distillation with the character and control of pot still distillation. It's not the cheapest or easiest way to do things, but it produces better vodka.

How many times to distill?

This is where marketing gets involved. Some vodkas proudly proclaim "distilled 5 times!" or "distilled 10 times!" as if more is automatically better.

Reality check: Multiple distillations do increase purity, but there's a point of diminishing returns. After 3-5 distillations, you're not making it notably better, you're just burning energy and creating marketing copy.

What matters more is:

• The quality of your still
• How carefully you make your cuts (more on this next)
• The quality of your base ingredients

Step 5: Making the Cuts (Heads, Hearts, and Tails)

Here's something most vodka drinkers don't know: not all of the distilled liquid is drinkable. In fact, the first and last portions can be quite nasty.

During distillation, the liquid comes out in three phases:

The Heads (the first bit)

Also called "foreshots," this portion contains:

• Methanol (toxic)
• Acetone (nail polish remover smell)
• Various volatile compounds you definitely don't want

What to do with it: Chuck it. Bin it. Throw it away. Do not pass go, do not collect £200, do not let it anywhere near your vodka.

Some distillers will keep it for industrial purposes, but it's absolutely not going in the bottle.

The Hearts (the middle bit, aka – the good stuff)

This is what you're after. The hearts are:

• Pure ethanol with minimal impurities
• Smooth and clean-tasting
• The actual vodka

This is the only portion that makes it into the bottle. Everything else is either too dangerous or too rough.

The Tails (the last bit)

These contain:

• Fusel oils (heavy, oily compounds)
• Proteins and carbohydrates that made it through
• Other impurities that taste unpleasant

What to do with them: Most distillers will redistill the tails in the next batch to extract any remaining alcohol. Some just discard them. Nobody puts them straight into vodka (or at least nobody should).

The skill: Knowing exactly when to make these cuts is where the distiller's expertise comes in. Cut too early from the heads into the hearts, and you'll get unpleasant compounds. Cut too late from the hearts into the tails, and same problem.

This is why good vodka requires skilled distillers, not just expensive equipment.

Step 6: Filtration (The Polish)

After distillation, you have very pure alcohol—usually around 95-96% ABV (or about 190 proof for our American friends). But many distillers still run it through filters to remove any remaining impurities and smooth out the texture.

Common filtration and treatment methods:

• Activated charcoal / carbon – The most common method. Charcoal is porous and absorbs impurities like a tiny molecular sponge.
• Birch charcoal – Same principle, slightly different tree. Some distillers swear it produces a smoother result.
• Quartz sand or crystals – Filters out particles and can slightly alter the mineral content.
• Silver – Some premium brands filter through silver, which has antimicrobial properties. Also makes good marketing.
• Diamond dust – Yes, this exists. No, it doesn't make the vodka noticeably better. Yes, it does make the price tag noticeably higher.

The debate: Some craft distillers argue that if you've done everything right, quality ingredients, careful fermentation, precise distillation, you shouldn't need filtration at all. They reckon filtering removes the impurities.

We're somewhere in the middle. We filter, but not excessively. We want clean vodka, but we don't want to strip out the subtle character that comes from our apple and potato blend.

Step 7: Dilution (Getting to Drinking Strength)

Remember how your vodka is now about 95-96% ABV? You absolutely cannot drink that. Well, you can, but you shouldn't. It would be like drinking hand sanitiser, except worse because at least hand sanitiser isn't designed to be palatable.

The process:

Distillers carefully add water to bring the vodka down to the desired strength:

• 40% ABV (80 proof) – Standard in the US and UK
• 37.5% ABV – Minimum in the EU
• 50% ABV or higher – For "overproof" vodkas that are either for cocktails or for people who hate their oesophagus

The water matters here. You don't just use tap water, most distillers use:

• Pure distilled water
• Local spring water
• Filtered water with specific mineral content

Why? Because vodka is about 60% water, so water quality directly affects taste.

This is also where distillers test and adjust. They'll add water gradually, testing the taste and mouthfeel at each stage until they hit their target profile.

Step 8: Bottling (The Easy Bit)

Finally, your vodka is ready to be bottled. This is the straightforward part:

• Final quality checks (taste, alcohol content, clarity)
• Bottle the vodka in clean, sterilised bottles
• Cap or cork it
• Label it
• Send it out into the world to be drunk by people who may or may not appreciate all the work that went into it

Some distillers let the vodka rest for a period after dilution to let the water and alcohol fully integrate. Others bottle immediately. Both approaches work.

The Dutch Barn Process: A Unique Blend

Right, so now you know the general process. Here's what makes Dutch Barn specifically different:

1. Unique base blend – We combine apple spirit (made from 100% British apples) with a touch of redistilled potato spirit. This is something only we do, to our knowledge. The apple brings smoothness and clean character, whilst the potato adds that creamy, luxurious mouthfeel.
2. Dual still system – We use both a modern column still and a traditional pot still with rectification columns. This gives us precise control over the distillation process and allows us to achieve both purity and character.
3. Careful production – We make precise cuts, keeping only the hearts. No shortcuts, no compromises.
4. Balanced filtration – We filter to remove impurities but not so much that we strip out the subtle characteristics that make our vodka interesting.
5. Quality water – We dilute with quality water to bring it to 40% ABV, testing throughout to ensure we hit the right balance.
6. Resting – unlike a lot of distilleries in a rush to pump out cheap vodka, we found through experience that letting Dutch Barn have a little nap (around a week) after going through the distillation process, let’s everything calm down and relax.  Making for a smoother drinking vodka.
7. Bottle and send to you – Because vodka that sits in our warehouse isn't fulfilling its purpose.

The result? A vodka that's naturally smooth with a creamy mouthfeel, clean character, and doesn't require a lemon wedge chaser to be drinkable.

Common Vodka Production Myths, Debunked

Before we finish, let's address some common misconceptions:

• "More distillations = better vodka" Not necessarily. After about 3-5 distillations, you're not improving quality significantly, you're mostly creating marketing material.
• "All vodka is the same because it's neutral spirit" "Neutral" doesn't mean "identical." Different base ingredients, water, and production methods create different vodkas.
• "Premium vodka is filtered through diamonds/gold/unicorn tears" Some of these filtration methods are real (diamonds, yes; gold, sometimes; unicorn tears, sadly no). But exotic filtration materials don't automatically make vodka better, they mostly make it more expensive.
• "Vodka has no flavour" If your vodka genuinely has no flavour, it's either incredibly over-processed or you've lost your sense of taste. Good vodka has subtle character.
• "You can make vodka from anything" Technically true, you can ferment and distill almost anything. But "can" and "should" are very different questions.

The Bottom Line

Making vodka involves:

1. Choosing base ingredients with sugar or starch
2. Converting starch to sugar (if necessary)
3. Fermenting with yeast to create alcohol
4. Distilling to separate and purify the alcohol
5. Making careful cuts to keep only the good stuff
6. Filtering to remove remaining impurities
7. Diluting to drinking strength
8. Bottling and hoping people appreciate your efforts

It's part science, part art, and entirely dependent on the skill of the distiller and the quality of the ingredients.

Dutch Barn makes vodka from a unique blend of apple and potato spirit because they complement each other beautifully, the apple provides smoothness and clean character, the potato brings creamy mouthfeel. We use both column and pot stills because different still types bring different benefits, and we want the best of both.

So next time you're enjoying a vodka (ours or anyone else's), take a moment to appreciate the journey from farm to flask. Someone put genuine effort into turning agricultural products into something you can drink without grimacing.

And if you're still drinking vodka that makes you grimace, maybe it's time to upgrade. Just saying.

Cheers (and thanks for staying awake through the educational bit),

The Dutch Barn Team

(Turning apples and potatoes into vodka since always, making chemistry sound interesting since today)