Well OT: Strength of vodka

since weakening vodka *is* about adding water, the answer has to be 'no'

I think your best bet is to weaken it by diluting it with water. AIUI, most spirits are diluted after distillation anyway (IIRC, whiskeys are usually distilled to something like 70 or 80% alcohol, aged in casks, then watered down to 40% just before bottling).

I suggest doing lots of experiments on yourself with various ratios of pear drops, vodka, & water. :-)

Vodka is mostly water , and anything you are likely to be able to add to weaken it will have a an even greater proportion of water.

What about trying to get the strength right by adding pure water and then tweaking the flavour with natural essences, herbs, spices, sweeteners, cordial, or even blades of grass from an english meadow along the lines of that polish vodka which I can never remember or pronounce.

Oh FFS! How else do you expect to weaken it, more alcohol?

You can add some flavouring as well, but you are doing that anyway.

MBQ

I honestly didn't know that :/

Well I didn't think it was just water. I once had a whiskey but they didn't have my required mixer so, as I'd seen someone ask for a whiskey and water, I decided to try that. To my taste buds, all it did was that I could taste the whiskey but also taste the water as well, which is why I never have ice cubes in any drink.

Well, since you insist... :')

that depends on the water. Whisky should have soft (rain) water without any chlorine.

In my opinion, cheap whisky should have Coke added, turning it into a long drink, while decent whisky should have nothing at all added, not even water or ice!

SteveW

certainly "cooking whisky" needs something added. On the other hand cask strength malt is a bit too strong to drink neat, so good highland water should be used - in moderation, Ice? ugh!

Or Malvern water.

As you say, ice is strictly for Americans.

To be fair you could just leave the cap off an let the alcohol evaporate I suppose.

well it depends what is in the water besides water..

I suspect you don't mean "proof". Vodka is about 40% alcohol by volume, not 40% proof.

When they're diluting Bourbon, which is as close as they get to whisky, the Yanks have what they call "Bourbon and branch", with the water coming from the same stream as the water used to brew the Bourbon.

But diluting *any* decent whisky is heresy.

Nonsense. Most whisky is diluted when bottled, very little is sold at cask strength.

In article , John writes

snip

Iceland stores used to sell weak versions of various spirits.

I reckon that pear drops would taste horrible unless you pack enough into the vodka to keep the flavour strong and sharp. And if you dissolve that much sugar and flavour into the vodka you'll be bulking out the volume so that the proportion of alcohol goes down anyway. Why not try it out without any further dilution and see what it is like before you think of diluting it further?

Nick