Beer in the Evening

It’s Friday afternoon in the BITE offices, we’ve had a long week working on new things for the site and it’s time for our favourite pastime – having a drink! This week we’ve been sent a bottle of Russian Standard to try out. There has to be a place in my heart for vodka. Most folks think “vodka, they all taste the same”, and they will do when you slaughter a good vodka with bar mixers, or mask it in buckets of cheap cocktails. But imagine if you were to do a blind taste test of neat vodka, the chances are very strong that you will always pick Russian Standard.  Why? Because for starters Russian Standard has no burn on the way down, that means the smooth taste will even appeal to folks who don’t usually sip vodka’s, it’s quite viscous not watery like dirt cheap vodka’s, a sweet taste, and an immediate warmth that pulls on the heart strings. This will be the perfect shot for this winter. We were lucky enough to receive a sample of Russian Standard from the UK marketing team, I’m immediately intrigued as I’ve tried Russian Standard before, under it’s Russian name “Russkiy Standart” and I am wondering if it is the same or an imitation just for the UK.  No need for any concerns the taste is exactly the same and the lack of burn is the same.

Ok, how did we drink it.  Well, first of all I find it’s best to chill a vodka, down to around 4 degrees by stuffing it in our office fridge surrounded with bags of ice. We then each poured a shot over a few cubes of ice and thats it – drink it down in 3 sips over a duration of about 15 minutes.

It’s probably best that we first of all review the most common application for this Vodka in high street bars, the classic “Vodka and coke please mate”.  Once again, a few cubes of ice and a shot of Russian Standard… add some Coke, give it a quick stir and presto.  It’s actually perfect.  It may seem like we are chipping away at the Russian Standard brand, but let me tell you this is the best Vodka and Coke I have tasted.  It’s worth mentioning that we will be previewing some of the trendier applications for Russian Standard over the following weeks in our upcoming blog posts, but for now we just want you to be aware of how good this Vodka is, so good infact we gave a sample to some fellow co-workers in the office next to us who all agreed with us, Russian Standard is the best Vodka out there at the moment (or did they just say that to us so they could have more free drinks whilst at work?) either way, this bottle isn’t leaving our office again. We’re keeping this here for good times! 

Chris’s score: 8.5/10

Steves score: 8.0/10