No. 3465 — Removing Odours from Spirit: Historical Method and Editorial Commentary

The original recipe begins with a claim that 1½ pounds birch charcoal can remove odours from 1 vedro spirit. The author describes collecting highly heated coals in a covered pot so they extinguish, removing the ash, cooling and crushing the charcoal without making it too fine.

The charcoal and spirit were held together in a bottle for three weeks, shaken three or four times daily. A further week of undisturbed settling followed.

The source then describes a second bottle holding 1 pound carefully sorted large yellow raisins and 8 zolotniks chopped orris root. Spirit from the charcoal was passed through white flannel into this bottle, held for twelve days and filtered through flannel again.

The author claims this product could replace French vodka for nalivka and says it should be diluted with boiled cooled water to avoid cloudiness. The strength was judged by alcohol hydrometers.

Editorial note (later addition on the Russian website). The editors explain that Molokhovets's advice on removing odour and impurities differs from the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron (St Petersburg, 1890–1907), so they have added historical context on vodka and industrial purification at the end of the nineteenth century.

The editors describe old Russian vodka as using fresh water from clean verified sources, without heat or other treatment; they present this as a distinction from vodkas elsewhere. This is an editorial historical claim, not an independently verified characteristic.

They distinguish rectification (distillation) and cold filtration through charcoal. In the editors' account distillation was cheaper but, because spirit dissolves fusel oils readily, did not necessarily produce highly purified alcohol. Charcoal treatment was seen as capable of better results but much slower.

The note explains that fusel oils consist of substances with properties similar to ethanol but greater chemical complexity, making them relatively soluble in strong spirit and responsible for unpleasant flavour and smell.

It paraphrases Brockhaus and Efron's observation that strong spirit dissolves fusel oil too readily for effective removal by ordinary cold charcoal filtration, whereas dilution with water makes some of the unwanted oil easier for charcoal to retain.

According to the added historical account, this is why vodka factories diluted spirit to vodka strength before charcoal filtering it.

The editors also report that charcoal obtained directly from ordinary fires or ovens could be unsuitable for filtering because it contained tarry and scorched matter; they discuss additional charring in specially adapted kilns or ovens as a historical industrial practice.

The account describes charcoal being extinguished in closed metal vessels and this treatment being used to restore charcoal that had absorbed unwanted substances.

The note says historical filters used charcoal particles approximately walnut-sized (70 percent) with smaller crumbs (30 percent). A five-vat stepped apparatus was reported: one mixing vessel for spirit and water, then four filtering vessels.

In the reported arrangement, filtering vats had wooden grates at the bottom covered by coarse cloth and a charcoal layer 20–35 cm deep. Flow passed through the charcoal by gravity, with taps regulating throughput because filtration quality depended on flow rate.

A sand filter was sometimes placed after the charcoal in the final vessel. Birch, linden, spruce and alder were named as desirable charcoal woods. The editorial note prints an industrial claim that 100 kg charcoal could treat 22,500 litres spirit.