The aim of this research is to characterize some distilled drinks commercially available on the market (brandy, gin, vodka, whiskey) and some distilled beverages provided by private manufacturers (palinca made in copper, aluminum and stainless steel distillation apparatus). For this purpose the alcoholic concentration, the dry extract, the total acidity, the ash content and copper level were determined. The alcoholic concentration was measured using the picnometer method and the copper content was determined by UV-VIS molecular absorption spectrometric method. This study shows that the distilled beverages commercially available on the market can be discriminated from palinca, a homemade brandy using the differences between the obtained results.