Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast that glows so bright you’ll have to wear ear...shades… I guess, is what I’m going with. What can I say, I’ve been sampling the vodka.

I'm your host this week, Aaron, and with me are:

I'm Shea, and …

Brewing Trouble

Or, it's Miller-rad time!

The last few weeks have been pretty heavy on Interesting If True so I thought I'd bring it back down to Earth with a story that's a tight blend of quackery, stupidity, and 100-proof oh-god-why!?

We've talked about raw milk in the past—the unpasteurized cow juice that's as dangerous to drink as it is difficult to find. Seriously, you have to buy into a time-share of a cow. Unless you live in Wyoming where we passed the Freedom to Eat Patriotism and Drink Libtears Freely for Freenees Bill that gives producers of potentially unpotable products permission to pitch their paraphernalia provided they prove they've primed patrons with presentations about the potential for poor personal prosperity. My milk hook-up, for example, has the usual "we test this weekly at CU FoCo, but it might mess you up... it might also make your lactose intolerance go away*" *-statements not verified by anyone.

I use mine to make cheese, by the way, intensionally infecting with thermophilic cultures that outcompete dysentery.

We've also talked about raw water. The belief that fluoride and other water treatments are mind-control or whatever so it's "more natural", read "more healthy", to drink water as nature intended—right out of the ditch you found it in. Proponents of raw water don't worry about the stuff floating in it, because water is magic and knows what's best for you. Besides, that rainbow shimmer is a petroleum’shine, it's nature's way of telling you that it's like drinking the rainbow—no affiliation to the much safer, rainbow editable candies.

Still, knowing what you now know about water and otherwise untreated products, where is the best place to get water to make your brew the best brew?

Rocky mountains? Nope, gonna have to think more remote comrade.

That's right, the best vodka is brewed with fresh water from the Dnieper river which some listeners may know flows through the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv continuing into the Polesie State Reserve, a Russian national forest.

There, nestled in what Google Maps shows as a low-land forest, is the town of Pripyat, and their new distillery.

Some listeners might already have their shock-and-awe faces on, but for anyone whose Russian geography isn't great, there's a reason it's cheap to grow rye and collect water here—and it isn't tax breaks. The Chernobyl Spirit Company set up in the Chernobyl exclusion zone (CEZ)—you know, that 4,000 square kilometer bit of east Europe that was abandoned after the 1986 nuclear disaster—which you shouldn't go anywhere near unless you like having 23-toed babies... per foot.

Atomik Vodka from the Chernobyl Spirit Company

The Vodka, which features a rough, radiation-burned, looking bore on the label is called Atomik. A smooth Apple flavored spirit is, from the bottle:

[Atomik is] a high quality spirit drink like those traditionally made in Ukrainian villages for many centuries (as "moonshine"). This small batch distillate is made from apples grown in regions affected by the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Fruits grown in many areas are now safe to consume, but distillation reduces the radioactivity even further to almost undetectable levels. 75% of profits from ATOMIK will go to supporting local communities and wildlife conservation in Chernobyl affected areas of Ukraine.

~Atomik Vodka, AtomikVodka.com

So all in all, it could be worse. At least they're giving a portion of sales to charity... hopefully.

The original run produced some 1,