Stocking the Bar - Choosing a Vodka with Kyle McHugh
By Anthony Todd in Food on Mar 14, 2011 3:40PM
Whether you are moving into your first home, trying to jump into the craft cocktail craze or just looking to improve your home mixing, choosing bottles for your home bar can be confusing and expensive. To help you out, Chicagoist will sit down with some of Chicago's best booze experts and get their opinions about what to stock, what brands are worth trying, and how to make your home bar complete. For the first entry, we chose vodkas with The Boozehound, Kyle McHugh.
Vodka is the bastard stepchild of the craft cocktail movement. It was the basis for much of the 1990s -tini craze, and it helped popularize cocktails to a new generation of drinkers, but after those heady days of pink, orange and blue drinks, it has fallen somewhat out of favor. Though, you wouldn't know it from the liquor store - new vodka brands seem to come out every month, and the variety is completely overwhelming. While you might not find vodka front and center on bar menus, it is still a home bartending essential. In fact, we think that the care with which a home mixer chooses a vodka can be indicative of their personality and committment to the enterprise. We always check out the vodka first - is it a handle of cheap junk, half empty? How dusty is it? Do they have a special spot for that back-lit bottle of Grey Goose? No matter what, it tells you something about the owner.
We met with "The Boozehound" Kyle McHugh, former owner of Drinks over Dearborn and future beverage manager of Lady Gregory in Andersonville, to take us through choosing a vodka. The first myth he dispelled was that vodka is unimportant, tasteless or not worth paying attention to. Vodka has tastes and textures that even the average drinker can distinguish. "People are always surprised to see how different each vodka is, when they taste them side by side," McHugh told us. A tip: be sure to taste your vodka at room temperature the first time, since freezing it kills most of the taste.
Vodka is essentially distilled, unflavored alcohol - whatever comes out of the end of a still, cut with water and put in a bottle. But, lots of things can affect the quality of that end product. For instance, why are some vodkas extremely cheap and others expensive? McHugh told us that a lot depends on where distillers make "cuts" - in other words, how much imperfect product they allow to mix with the vodka. The beginning and the end of any distilling run are filled with nasty (and often poisonous) organic compounds, and the task of the distiller is to only use the best "middles" they can get. But, if you're trying to bottle vodka at $5 a gallon, you aren't going to be so picky. Cheap vodka might give you a nasty headache.
Different grains also change things up. Vodka can be made with mixed grains, rye, wheat and potato, as well as more exotic ingredients like bison grass. Each grain will impart a different taste to the vodka, and despite what advertisers might try to argue, no one grain is "better" than any other. The best way to chose one is to go to a bar with a friendly bartender and ask to taste a little bit of 4 or 5 different types of vodkas. Most bartenders will be willing to geek out with you, and it's the only way to get a handle on your personal taste. And, it'll be a lot cheaper than buying 10 different bottles of vodka! Go to a bar with a good cocktail program, but go at an odd hour, when it is unlikely to be crowded. "Personal taste matters," McHugh emphasized again and again. "Never be ashamed of what works." If your genuine favorite is $8 plastic bottles, so be it. The most important thing? Ignore branding. "Premium" vodka has no legal definition, and buying expensive might mean you are supporting the brand's advertising budget.
Why should you bother to chose a decent vodka, if all you're going to do is mix it? McHugh went on a mini-rant, in his very calm way. "People seem to have bought into the idea 'Don't cook with a wine you wouldn't drink.' But when you say that about a bloody mary, people roll their eyes." Even when you are using strong mixers, the difference between a bad and a good vodka (or between a vodka you like and a vodka you don't like) is obvious. The same thing goes for infusing at home. Most flavored vodkas are made with artificial extracts and are pretty disgusting - make your own for a fraction of the cost. But use decent vodka, or you will end up with ... flavored bad liquor. The infusion won't mask the taste.
Well, what should you buy? McHugh believes that, for each category of spirit, you should have what he calls a "Tuesday night" version, as well as a higher end option. Taste is paramount, but for the Tuesday night vodka, McHugh suggests Tito's, Svedka or Sobieski. None of these will break the bank. For a fancy vodka, either of our two local contenders, North Shore or Koval, will do nicely - both win taste tests around the country. We'd like to throw in a nod to our favorite infused vodka for sipping - if you can find a bottle of Pieprzowa, a Polish pepper-infused vodka, buy it. You won't be able to stop drinking it.