Alcoholic Beverages

Took part in a vodka tasting contest, in which participants tried to tell an expensive brand from a cheap one. I don't recall the exact outcome, for obvious reasons. But I do know that several people swore they could taste the difference.Well, maybe they could. Because according to a study in the Journal of [Agricultural:Farming] and Food Chemistry, [different:difficult] vodkas can have different molecular "structures," which could drive drinkers to favor one brand over another.Vodka's an [alcoholic:elastic] beverage that's supposed to be relatively flavourless. So researchers got to wondering: how come people who enjoy the stuff often express brand preference? Being good little scientists, they trotted out their [spectroscopic:periphrastic] equipment and examined the [chemical:physical] signatures of five different vodkas. What they found is that each brand differs in how its ethanol molecules cluster. In the ethanol-water mix we call vodka, some of the ethanol molecules get surrounded by a sort of "cage" made of water. And different brands differ in how much ethanol is caged. Vodkas with fewer cages might seem more "watery" than those with more [structure:features] .Of course, drink enough of the stuff and it really won't matter how tightly caged it is. You'll be loose as a grey goose.