Dutch Barn Vodka: How it’s Made!

Fermentation
It all starts with apple concentrate they bring in from apples made in Herefordshire, 20 tons.
It’s mixed with water and turned into apple juice then fermented in  5 x 6000 litres washbacks for 72 hours into cider. It’s a bit more like scrumpy at 15% ABV!

Stripping Column
We then strip the cider in stripping column (magic Mike) 25 plates , this is a process where the cider enters the column ¾ way up and runs down the column, it is then heated with steam and distilled through multiple plates, separating the alcohol (which is sent to the top of the column to be cooled and condensed into low wines 50 % ABV) and the wastage which is essentially apple juice – used for fertiliser.

Pot Distillation
The low wines are then transferred to their 2500 litre copper pot (Granny Smith) where it is heated using a steam jacket to 64.7 degrees. This separates the alcohol from the water, carrying the congeners (flavour compounds) with it. For steam, they use a borehole drilled to a depth of 263 metres, the water is then filtered using reverse osmosis.

Rectification
Rectification involves the process of removing impurities  from an already distilled spirit. This is done through a process of repeated distillation. The goal of rectification is to create a spirit that is as pure and clean as possible, with a consistent flavour profile.
The alcohol vapours are transferred from the pot still into the two columns – the 1st with 26 plates, the second with 25 plates.
The stills are the biggest in Europe which had to be cut in half due to over-zealous planning permission. The vodka is technically distilled at least 73 times in a closed loop.
Minimum legal amount for vodka is triple distillation!

Taking the cut

They get three cuts called the Heads, Hearts and Tails.

Heads: they get a larger heads than normal due to high amounts of methanol (more methanol in apples than other grains or materials) and this can be re-used as hand sanitiser.

Heart: 1100 litres of hearts is then 96.5% ABV, the flavour is checked every 20 mins by the head distiller.

Tails: When the distillers detect off-notes such as bitterness, they cut the tails. The Tails are the stored in a 2500 litre tank to be used later. To detect cuts, they use temperature, taste and ABV.

Demethylation
Our De-meth column (Crystal) is used to remove any remaining amounts of methanol. This reduces the methanol in our vodka to only 1.2mg per 1000 litres.

To put this into perspective Calvados/cider brandy is 6000mg per 1000 litres.

Vodka is usually 30 mg per 1000 litres and Gin at 5 mg per 1000 litres.

Carbon Treatment Carbon Treatment
The spirit is then taken to carbon treatment, they take 4kgs of carbon, crush it into powder and then mix it in with the Vodka spirit in a tank, it is then aggravated.

They then filter the Vodka 27 times through a carbon filter and the alcohol is reduced to 40% ABV. The alcohol is then rested for 1 week to let all the molecules come together and let the vodka chill.