640 lines
32 KiB
Plaintext
640 lines
32 KiB
Plaintext
From: ajd@itl.itd.umich.edu (AjD)
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Date: 24 Nov 91 21:42:06 GMT
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Newsgroups: rec.food.drink,alt.drugs
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Subject: Everclear FAQ (preliminary)
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[Sorry for the ghost posting that went out first.]
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Everclear FAQ
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Table of Contents
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- Introduction
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- Where is Everclear
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- Includes notes on other >150 proof grain alcohols, and on kinds of
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Everclear available.
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- Prices for Everclear
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- Recipes
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- Liqueurs
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- Other uses
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- The Chemistry and Dangers of Grain Alcohols
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- Includes first-hand stories and information on Everclear and
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lab-grade ethanol.
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- Legal Problems
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- Everclear Myths and Legends
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- Miscellaneous
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________________________________________________________________________
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Introduction
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It seems that a lot of people have a fondness for drinking paint
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thinner.(:->) There was a good load of response to my question about
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where to find that relatively notorious 190-proof drink, Everclear, and
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although only a half of the states in the union are covered, it has
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taken me a while to patch everything together. This list is definitely
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open to additions.
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My original question was where Everclear was available, and what
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truth were there to the rumors of it being banned for import in some
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states.
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The question is mostly but not only academic. I've been wanting to
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try my hand at making "electric jello" for years!
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Some notes on the compiling of the list:
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All material between and including "Recipes" and "Misc Notes" are direct
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quotes from postings and mailings; any comments I have to make will be
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in brackets [ ]. Some material has been edited to get to the point and
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move on; several people have pieces of their paragraphs spread over
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various sections to fit the categorization. I beg forgiveness for
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misinterpretations due to my editing.
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People who wish to have their names removed from attributions, or have
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corrections to make in what they said, should e-mail me (AjD) directly.
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Please be kind -- this is my first attempt at compiling something with
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this volume of references.
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Some notes on the first edition:
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This is intended as a preliminary version of a more conclusive FAQ,
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which will be updated as the legal status of Everclear and other very
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strong (>150 proof) grain alcohols change. The final version of this
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edition could use the following information:
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- Documentation of legal implications of Everclear, and of banning
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- Information about the distillery
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- Citations about grain alcohol in medical and technical journals
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- Filling out and clarifications of any information given below which
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seems vague.
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I forgot to ask whether people would like to receive credit for the
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information they provide; Given the content of some entries, they may
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not. For this posting, I have included the names of people as given in
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the header of their messages. I will take no response to this posting to mean
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that they would like to keep their name attached to their quote.
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Other comments relevant to the issue or to my compiling are
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welcome. e-mail to:
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ajd@itl.itd.umich.edu
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________________________________________________________________________
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Where is Everclear?
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Everclear is available in the following states:
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[Note: I speculate that various cities and counties within a given
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state may not allow grain alcohol of that strength; this is based on the
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fact that I couldn't find it when I lived in Erie, Pennsylvania.]
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Arizona Colorado
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Illinois Indiana
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Kentucky Louisiana
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Mississippi Nevada
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New Jersey New York
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North Carolina North Dakota
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Oklahoma Pennsylvania
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Texas Virginia
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Washington DC Wisconsin (possibly)
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Wyoming
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The following places have grain alcohol of a high enough percentage to
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be worth consideration here, but may not necessarily have the Everclear
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brand.
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Alabama New Hampshire
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Ontario, Canada Quebec, Canada
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Tijuana, Mexico
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[Alcohols (specifically, rum and vodka) are available in proofs of up to
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151 in most states, and so they were not considered in this survey;
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states carrying Everclear 153 were retained, because they fit the
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original parameters of the survey.]
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Everclear is not available in the following states:
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California Ohio
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Minnesota Washington State (possibly)
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Massachusetts (possibly)
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The followings states have no results yet:
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Alaska Arkansas
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Connecticut Delaware
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Florida Georgia
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Hawaii Idaho
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Iowa Kansas
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Maine Maryland
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Michigan Missouri
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Montana Nebraska
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New Mexico Oregon
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Rhode Island South Carolina
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South Dakota Tennessee
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Utah Vermont
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West Virginia
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The "plain" Everclear comes in two strengths: 153 proof and 190 proof.,
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the weaker apparently replacing the stronger in several states.
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There are several fruit punches and coolers marketed with the name
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"Everclear" on the label; the most widely known seems to be "Purple
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Passion", which is a grape fruit drink. There is also a tropical-style
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fruit punch. These have a strength of six to eight percent alcohol.
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________________________________________________________________________
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Prices for Everclear
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Some people offered prices for Everclear where they live. The range
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of reports are:
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$10-$15 for 1/5 in New Orleans [=$12.50/l]
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"About five dollars" per 375 ml in Arizona and Louisiana [=$13.33/l]
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$11 for a fifth in Pennsylvania [=$13.75/l]
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"about $16/liter" in Indiana
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$12 for "a liter, I think" in Austin, TX
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"about $14 a bottle" in New Jersey [either a fifth or liter]
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Overall, no savings great enough to merit crossing several extra state
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lines.
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________________________________________________________________________
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Recipes
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I have found that about a five or six to one ratio of everclear to
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water in your jello mix works the best. by this i mean it maximizes
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alcohol content while still jelling in a reasonable time and at a
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reasonable temp.
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Have fun with this recipie.
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Another use for everclear... is to make melon balls. slice a
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watermellon in half. into each half pour a flask of everclear. allow
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the melons to sit so that the everclear soaks in well. then eat the
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melon, and suck the rinds. the rinds are especially good as they have
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soaked up most of the everclear.
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enjoy.
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- alex chermside
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It goes well with grape Kool-aid. Any proportion you want.
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The recipe for making regular jello includes three ingredients:
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1. Jello powder
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2. Very hot water
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3. Cold water
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To make rum jello, substitute 80-proof rum for the cold water. If you
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want to avoid the "rum" taste, you can use 50% everclear + 50% water
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instead.
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I have made rum jello, and the above recipe worked well. I have
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tried using more alcohol with bad results.
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- Kieth Lewis
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Everclear can be used, with good results, as a substitute for Gin or
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Vodka in almost any mixed drink. The problem with the Jello is that I
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think there are problems with getting something to Gell with such a high
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alcohol content.
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- Fotis Xipolitakis
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We tried a Black Russian, substituting Everclear for the vodka. I added
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the Everclear to the glass, then the Kahlua, and the Kahlua curdled! It
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was way too strong and I ended up adding milk and making a White Russian
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out of it.
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One successful recipe is to take a 16 oz. tumbler, pour in 2 shots
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of Chambord (raspberry liquor), 1/2 to 1 shot of Everclear, and then add
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ice and fill the glass with Classic Coke. You really can't taste the
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Everclear, the raspberry flavor comes through, and it packs quite a
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punch. We dubbed this drink the "Leg Spreader", since we figured that
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women would like it more than men, and that you could get quite smashed
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on it without realizing it.
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I have made 'hairy buffalo' with it in college, which is a Hawaiian
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Punch-based drink. Take oranges, marischino cherries, apples, limes,
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and lemons, slice them (except for the cherries) and soak them in
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Everclear overnight, or at least for a few hours. Pour the fruit and
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Everclear into Hawaiian punch (you'll need to experiment with the
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ratios, but you shouldn't be able to taste the Everclear too well). It's
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really cool if you add dry ice to make it fog up. I don't recommend
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this if you have light-colored furniture or carpeting, because
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unfortunately the Hawaiian Punch does a great job of staining should it
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be spilled.
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- Sheila Wallace
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I finally got some everclear for the first time last week and made a
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halloween punch with it. Bit of a hodge podge: OJ, a can of Sprite,
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pineapple juice, and everclear, plus a packet of Pat O'Briens cyclone
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mix. Not bad, the guests liked it.
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- Brian Bloom
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...the world's cheapest Tequila+Everclear+the world's cheapest O.J. ==
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BAD NEWS!!!
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- Brian "Zamboni" Aslakson
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My favorite method of serving the stuff was mixed with Kool-aid. I
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had two ways of figuring out how much ethanol to add to 2 quarts of
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Kool-aid:
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1) Since it was 95%, I just rounded up and considered it pure
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alcohol for the purpose of calculations. I would decide a percentage I
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wanted to arrive at, usually between 5 and 15%. Say 10%. So: 2
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quarts=64 oz. I COULD use algebra, to the effect of x = (64 + x)/10 ,
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making x = 7.1. Fuck that--I would have just estimated, and guessed 7
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oz. anyway. I would have taken a measuring cup and poured somewhere
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between 3/4 and 1 cup ethanol into the 2 quarts of punch. I say would
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have, because I forget what percentage I usually decided on, the few
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times I've done this. This method is the one I would use at the
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beginning of the party. More frequently, I would use method 2.
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2) Make Kool-aid, add ethanol to taste. This is the method you use
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after the first batch. Face it: you're going to have to sample your
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work out of professional pride. And if you're like me, you're going to
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realize that WOW--you can barely taste 10%. So you're going to add more
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ethanol to that first batch, after you carefully figured out how much to
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put in, and then you're going to taste it again. And you're going to do
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this a couple of times, until either you get it perfect, or you
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overshoot with the ethanol, and realize that you're going to have to add
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more kool-aid or water or sugar (sugar helps if you overdid the
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alcohol), and then you're going to have to taste it again. Etcetera.
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And if you're stupid enough to tell you're guests about the true origin
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of the alcohol, they're going to assume that you're an absolute idiot
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who's trying to poison them with methanol, and to assuage their fears,
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you're going to have to drink a lot of it before they'll even think of
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touching it. (Hint: lie like a dog and tell your guests that it's
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Everclear that your Uncle Bob bought in Kentucky.) For these reasons,
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when I serve ethanol punch at a party, I'm usually the first one to cop
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a major buzz. (And if it weren't for the LSD, I probably would have
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completely passed out from it a couple of times :-)
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The code word that I and my friends use for 95% ethanol from the
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lab is "the Motts", not because of the commercial ("I've got the
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Motts"), but because after one particularly good haul, I kept a half
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gallon of ethanol in a 2-quart Motts apple juice jug.
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Lab grade alcohol...there's nothing like it!
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- Brian A. Bargmeyer
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A couple of years ago, we bought a fifth of Clear Springs [another
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grain alcohol] (we usually just call it 'PGA') and a 1.75 liter bottle
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of vodka. We got a styrofoam cooler, tossed in about 8 packs of Kool-
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Aid (Tropical Punch, I believe), a bunch of sugar, and filled it with a
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garden hose. We then poured the PGA and vodka into the cooler along
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with some various fruits. It turned out quite good...
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- Keith Seymour
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Let me tell you about this thing called Purple Passion. You buy it at
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the liquor store in a 2-liter plastic bottle like soda. It is basically
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carbonated grape juice and wine mixed with Everclear. The trace taste
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of alcohol is so small that you can just sit there drinking it and
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drinking it and get toasted in a big hurry. The label says it's 6.1%
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alcohol, but I would bet that's a little downplayed. Maybe I just drink
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so much I get wasted as though I were drinking whiskey, but the point is
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that you drink this to get drunk.
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The first swallows have kind of a bitter taste to me, but keep
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going. If you really want to get wasted and you don't like that
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piercing aftertaste that scotch and vodka have, this is the one.
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- Shea
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[At the given alcoholic percentage, a two-liter bottle has the alcoholic
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strength of eight and a half cans of Budweisers and can be drunk "like
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soda"; it is not to be "downplayed"! -- AjD]
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I've heard of some recipes, but they're all for drinks; one involving
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extracted THC ("green dragon"), and one involving 1 part everclear, 2
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parts 151 rum, and 1 part some bright blue alcoholic drink whose name I
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can't remember.
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- Rachel
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________________________________________________________________________
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Liqueurs
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I haven't been able to make a batch of homemade Kahlua since I moved to
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California. And don't say "Oh, just use vodka": It's just not the same
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- Arch Mott
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The main reason for [not using vodka] is, depending on the proof of the
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vodka, the proof of the final product after dilution with the sugar
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syrup is between 40 and 50. If some 190 proof is substituted, the proof
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can be brought up to that of a commercial liquor on any homemade liquor.
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- Ted Feuerbach
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- Find a glass container with an opening large enough to comfortable
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accept a medium size orange. the small the container the better.
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- Invert a glass shot glass and center in the bottom of the container.
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- Pour a cup of Everclear into the container without wetting the shot
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glass top. Place a fresh orange on top of the shot glass. The orange
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should have a moderately thick skin, but not excessive.
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- A ground glass top is ideal, if not, a closely fitting plate will do
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to cover the brue.
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- Check daily as the orange "sweats" its oils. It will slow after three
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or four days (a week is OK but not necessary). DO NOT OPEN AT ANY TIME
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till done.
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- Remove orange and shot glass and pour in a cup of bar syrup. Theres no
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majic here, find your own sweetness level, this is just for openners.
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- Pour into a regular bottle and stopper tightly (after you've tasted
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it, clear, crisp, intence, pure, WOW, no more of those orange liqueurs
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again).
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This stuff is fragile so plan on using it soon and don't make more
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than you can use, one week is fine, after two it very drinkable but the
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flavor is noticably less. And, it will get cloudy with no appearent
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affect.
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Yes any citris will work (never tried a grapefruit), we even put
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two dozen mint leaves on a thread and hung over. The leaves turned
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black and crumbly, but the tast -- sheer POWER.
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To answer the obvious next question, no Vodka will NOT work.
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- [attribution missing--please contact me (AjD)]
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[in reply to the previous posting:]
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Oh yes it will. I have done this exact same thing many times using
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ordinary 80 and 100 proof vodka although admittedly it takes longer than
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3 days. However, it also lasts a bit longer than a week!
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Here's how I did it last weekend:
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Into a 2 liter glass apothecary jar, pour a fifth of vodka. Using
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a long needle and white cotton thread, run a thread through a medium-
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sized orange. Suspend the orange over the vodka, wrapping the threads
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around a brick or similar heavy object. Cover, do not disturb for 10
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days. Remove the orange, mix corn syrup to taste. This stuff is potent
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and the orange flavor is overwhelming, although it tends to diminish
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after six months or so if you open it too frequently :-)
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- Gary Benson
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General Instructions for Herbal Cordials
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[This can be modified to make Green Dragon as well as other (legal)
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drinks; information has been gathered and summarized from the following
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books: Cooking With Cannabis by Adam Gottlieb, The Herbalist by Joseph
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E. and Clarence Meyer, and The Master Book of Herbalism by Paul Beyerl]
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Basically, throw the herbs into a mason jar, fill with Everclear,
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seal and let sit in a dark place for several weeks or months.
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Generally, if you don't use heat to extract, it will need to sit for at
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least two weeks. It is good to periodically swirl the jar around to
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loosen the contents. You then have the option of storing the jar as-is,
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and draining fluid to use as necessary, which will entail filtering on
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every use, but the formula will progressively get stronger. Or you may
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drain the stuff out, filtering through a cone-shape coffee filter into a
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bottle for longer storage.
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A more complex method is to dump all the herbal materials into a
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jar, fill with alcohol, and let sit as above for a week. Loosen the top
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of the jar and place in a hot bath; in which the water in a pot can boil
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freely without splashing into the jar. Heat for 30-45 minutes. Remove
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the jar and strain the alcohol into a second jar which has a fresh
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collection of herbs; this process can be repeated up to four times but
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for most people's purposes one repetition will be plenty. The final
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step is heating the formula as above and filtering into an empty bottle.
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I suspect, without experience, that one could improve the flavor of
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some herbal cordials by adding a bit of corn sugar, but then, there are
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elaborations and nuances to be had on all of the above steps. Any good
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book on herbs and herbal lore will have further information. There are
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also books specifically about making liqueurs and cordials, for those
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interested in the subject.
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- AjD
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________________________________________________________________________
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Other Uses
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In 1985, I was working at Goddard Space Flight Center with a group that
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used radio astronomy techniques (VLBI) to measure distances between the
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observatories, and use this to measure continental plate motion. I was
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sent to the observatory in Hat Creek, California to take some data.
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The data is recorded on enormous tapes (not the standard 1/2-inch
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computer tapes) with a special drive. Between each tape mount, the
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drive must be cleaned with pure alcohol. That's right, Everclear. But
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alas, the bottle was practically empty, so another flunkie and I drove
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to Reno ( > 100 miles) to buy some.
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The guy at the liquor store gave us a peculiar look when we asked
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him to sign the offical government purchase form!
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- Ilana Stern
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...pure ethyl alcohol for extracting flavors from herbs & spices.
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- Geoff Steckel
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I personally use it to clean wounds, because it doesn't sting and it
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kills infections. If I notice a cut getting inflamed, I splash it with
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Everclear and it heals up just fine.
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- Paula Goldman
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________________________________________________________________________
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The Chemistry and Dangers of Grain Alcohols
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I had a little everclear left over so we did shots of it. I took an
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everclear shot with no chaser. *Ouch* I can see why you have to be
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careful near open flames with that stuff!
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- Brian Bloom
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I tried drinking it straight just once, after my wisdom teeth were
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removed, and one socket felt inflamed. It was a very nasty experience.
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All of the moisture in my mouth was evaporated at once, the fumes were
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terrible, and my eyes attempted to leave my face. I've had 160 proof
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rum straight before, and Everclear is much worse.
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- Paula Goodman
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I tried drinking straight Everclear twice (just one shot each time).
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Both times I (later) came down with a sore throat followed by a cold. I
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think it does something to the protective mucus coating on my throat.
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This seldom happens with rum, vodka, or tequila.
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Once in my freshman dorm, a guy came staggering down the hall toward
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the men's room. He was barely able to stand up. A guy following him
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told me that the guy had just chugged a pint of Everclear. He never
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made it to the bathroom; he ended up leaning against the wall, whipping
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it out, and pissing for 5 minutes (!) right there in the hall.
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- Kieth Lewis
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I once did a shot of straight 190-proof Everclear. The sensation was
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like drinking liquid sand or something. The alcohol basically just
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absorbed all of the water from my mucous membranes, leaving me with an
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incredibly dry mouth. (This didn't last long, as I had a beer chaser
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ready.)
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I don't know that there is any significant difference between 190-
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proof Everclear and lab-grade alcohol. Pure alcohol (200 proof) is
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deliquescent -- it absorbs water from the atmosphere until it reaches
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190 proof (95% pure).
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- Steve Byers
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I do recomend that you not drink it straight as it will burn your
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throat and drinking very much of it straight can dissolve the mucus
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membranes in your throat and do considerable damage (i have seen
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someone go to the hospital after taking six shots of Everclear because
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he was coughing up blood from his now-raw throat.)
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- alex chermside
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Distilled alcohol will have a taste to it because of the actyl (?)
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aldehyde that will be produced with the alcohol. Can't remowve it by
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distillation, and it's what give the alcohol the nasty taste. Everclear
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is 95% alcohol by volume, not because by choice, but because you can't
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distill pure (100%) alcohol. You wouldn't want to be drinking pure
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alcohol anyways, since it contains trace amount of benzene in it (in
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order to remove all the water).
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- Stephen
|
||
|
||
Everclear is food grade 95% ethanol, and is quite widely available.
|
||
95% is the concentration that can be achieved with straight
|
||
distillation. That is the composition of the minimum-boiling azeotrope,
|
||
i.e. the mixture that has the lowest boiling point.
|
||
If you want to get it purer than that, you can get absolute alcohol
|
||
(200 proof American, which is different from Brit proof). That last 5%
|
||
of water is removed in one of two ways.
|
||
The easy way, used for industrial purposes, is to distil the water
|
||
out with benzene. The ternary mixture has a minimum-boiling azeotrope
|
||
which has substantially more water than the 5%. If memory serves, it has
|
||
about 17%, but I may be wildly off about that. I have not thought about
|
||
this in the last fifteen years and more. In any case, the water gets
|
||
distilled over rather quickly, leaving quite dry ethanol behind. Getting
|
||
it benzene-free is quite difficult. Benzene and ethanol have very
|
||
similar boiling points, within a degree Celsius or so of one another.
|
||
And benzene is very nasty stuff. You really don't want to drink any.
|
||
The other way to do this is to distil the alcohol from quicklime,
|
||
which reacts with water to form calcium hydroxide. If you want really,
|
||
really dry alcohol, it gets distilled, after that, from magnesium and
|
||
iodine. I suspect that would not be satisfactory from a food point of
|
||
view.
|
||
It takes at least some technical competence to make dry alcohol.
|
||
That is aside from the problem of whether you blow yourself up. Alcohol
|
||
is quite flammable.
|
||
High concentrations of alcohol will diffuse across mucous membranes
|
||
and disrupt cells by bursting them open. This is a common technique for
|
||
disrupting cells in the lab. I would expect everclear to do quite nasty
|
||
things to the throat and mouth, given any significant exposure.
|
||
At much lower levels, as low as about 30%, alcohol will precipitate
|
||
many proteins out of aqueous solutions. So expect to have jello "curdle"
|
||
on you if you get the concentration too high. Also, at those
|
||
concentrations many emulsions will get broken up. Expect cream liqueurs
|
||
to fall apart at not much higher.
|
||
Undenatured alcohol costs between two and three times as much as
|
||
denatured alcohol. The difference is due to the excise tax extracted by
|
||
the federal government. If you have a license from the Bureau of
|
||
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, you can buy it without paying the
|
||
premium. The tax gets waived. but they impose dramatic record-keeping
|
||
requirements on you. Enough to be a real pain. The idea, quite clearly,
|
||
is to keep people from drinking the stuff. Once the tax gets included,
|
||
everclear is about as expensive as cheap liquor.
|
||
I am pretty sure that pure ethanol has a taste and an odour of its
|
||
own. It would be pretty surprising if it did not. The odour is quite
|
||
different from that of acetaldehyde, the corresponding aldehyde, but I
|
||
cannot swear that the odour I associate with acetaldehyde is an accurate
|
||
guide to how acetaldehyde smells at very low levels.
|
||
The stuff I think of as pure alcohol has a faint sweet odour. Quite
|
||
pleasant, really.
|
||
- Shankar Bhattacharyya
|
||
|
||
Ah...lab grade EtOH! That clean refreshing drink!
|
||
My personal experience comes from snagging and drinking 95% EtOH
|
||
from a bio lab I was working at. The brand was Midwest Grain Products,
|
||
and on the bottle it said "95% ethanol, USP". Anyway, the stuff came in
|
||
1-gallon jugs in one of the labs (where we mixed it with distilled
|
||
water to 70% strength for cleaning and sterilization). The other lab
|
||
carried it in a five gallon carboy with a spigot for dispensing it. I
|
||
used it (officially) for killing fruit flies--it was a genetics lab,
|
||
and unwanted flies were tossed in a bottle of alcohol called "the
|
||
morgue".
|
||
Both labs had the same brand. Apparently, MGP is common stock in
|
||
biology labs.
|
||
Being a naturally curious lad, I asked my employer in one of the
|
||
labs exactly which alcohol I could drink and still see the light of day
|
||
the next week. Purely hypothetically, of course. He informed me that
|
||
the Midwest Grain Products 95% was fine to drink (sure there were trace
|
||
impurities, but nothing to hasten your death any more than the alcohol
|
||
would). He recommended against drinking the 100% ethanol, due to the
|
||
presence of benzene in amounts which might make one regret one's actions
|
||
later in life. However, the 100% ethanol wouldn't kill you
|
||
immediately, either. And he definitely recommended avoiding the
|
||
denatured alcohol, which in our lab was a mix of ethanol, methanol,
|
||
kerosene, and other delights. Somewhat less than tasty, I'm sure.
|
||
Note that the denatured stuff was a completely different brand from
|
||
MGP (exactly what, I'm not sure), and that the MGP bottles made no
|
||
mention of being denatured. I would THINK (I don't know) that companies
|
||
would be required to label the bottle accordingly if the alcohol was
|
||
denatured, and therefore capable of killing you on ingestion.
|
||
- Brian A. Bargmeyer
|
||
________________________________________________________________________
|
||
|
||
Legal Problems
|
||
|
||
When I was last in Reno (September, 1991), I bought a half gallon of
|
||
Everclear from discount liquor chain. I was only intending to get a
|
||
quart, but the retailer there said that when his current stock was
|
||
depleted, there would be no more. Ever. Never Ever. Never Ever any
|
||
more Everclear. :-) (sorry,...)
|
||
He mumbled something about a MADD campaign and national(?)
|
||
legislation passed, and that soon the only place you could buy Everclear
|
||
was some place in Tennessee (where it's made?), with a $10,000.00 fine
|
||
if you tried to smuggle it out of Tennessee.
|
||
- Douglas DeMers
|
||
|
||
There will be no more 190 proof Everclear in Nevada. The Everclear that
|
||
is sold in Nevada now is 153 proof. I assume this travesty has spread
|
||
to other states as well. Have y'all inspected your Everclear labels
|
||
carefully? :-)
|
||
- Brian B. Young
|
||
|
||
In Canada, we sometimes reffer to it as Alchool (pronounced alcool). It
|
||
is outlawed in Saskatchewan for sure and probably in Alberta and
|
||
Manitoba. It is generly not leagle were there is an abundance of grain.
|
||
It is a very potent grain alcohol. From my understanding the laws in
|
||
these parts of the country were designed to prevent home distilation
|
||
(moonshining).
|
||
- Fotis Xipolitakis
|
||
________________________________________________________________________
|
||
|
||
Everclear Myths and Legends
|
||
|
||
Oh good the fun part! How's this for legend: My friend's Mom claims
|
||
that she was at a party in her youth and one of the party-goers decided
|
||
to take a big gulp of PGA straight from the bottle. So he put the
|
||
bottle to his mouth and proceeded to chug it. He immediately passed out
|
||
& died. I dont know if that's true, but I certainly wouldn't try it.
|
||
- Keith Seymour
|
||
|
||
A friend of mine at UT Austin said that a friend of hers drank a very
|
||
SMALL amount straight and she threw up immediately. However at 95%
|
||
alcohol it's very toxic, and you can have exactly the same effects as
|
||
drinking 100% alcohol (which is not legal to sell, even to laboratories.
|
||
They detone laboratory ethanol with 5% acetate so that people wouldn't
|
||
try to drink it.). In other words, you can go blind, into a coma, die,
|
||
etc.
|
||
- Shea
|
||
[See the note by Shankar Bhattacharyya in "Chemistry and Dangers..."
|
||
above, for more accurate information on the content of lab-grade
|
||
alcohol. -- AjD]
|
||
________________________________________________________________________
|
||
|
||
Miscellaneous
|
||
|
||
Everclear also masquerades as grain alcohol in some states.
|
||
- Terri Huggett
|
||
|
||
Some places don't have it on the shelf. You have to ask for it.
|
||
- Joel A. Walberg
|
||
|
||
In Pennsylvania, they just started tracking the bottles with serial
|
||
numbers...
|
||
- Carl Robert Klemmer
|
||
|
||
...I had to sign a release form to purchase it [in Pennsylvania].
|
||
- The Mad Texan
|
||
|
||
I don't have the address, but it is marketed by World Wide Distilled
|
||
Products Company of Saint Louis, MO. Maybe you could ask them why they
|
||
are dropping the proof to 153 in some locales.
|
||
- Brian Young
|
||
|
||
It comes in a clear, very plain bottle, very generic looking. The label
|
||
doesn't really say a whole lot either. There is a picture of a
|
||
partially shucked ear of corn on it and there is some warning about
|
||
consumption being hazardus to your health and it says to keep it away
|
||
from open flame.
|
||
- Dave Reed
|
||
|
||
...there is something called diseal which is much cheaper (about $7-$10
|
||
for a liter) and is also 190 proof (so it should be the same stuff)...
|
||
- David Smith
|
||
[Where is this available? -- AjD]
|
||
|
||
...at the Ontario Liquor Board stores. It's not everclear, but they have
|
||
some distilled spirits that are 150 proof or more, so the effect is the
|
||
same.
|
||
- George Scott
|
||
|
||
When I was last down in Tijuana, Mexico, they sold liter bottles of
|
||
"Alcohol de Cana" (Alcohol distilled from Sugar Cane) for $2 (mid 80's).
|
||
This stuff was 192 proof. Nasty stuff. Half an ounce of it with a 12-
|
||
oz can of Coca-Cola, and you could really taste it.
|
||
- Bruce T. Hill
|
||
|
||
[in Alabama] We always bought 'Clear Springs' Grain Alcohol (basically
|
||
the same thing, it's 190 proof).
|
||
- Keith Seymour
|
||
|
||
I've seen 90% or 180 proof in Quebec...
|
||
- Fotis Xipolitakis
|
||
|
||
I don't know about distilling, but I know that 200 proof (100%) alcohol
|
||
did exist when I worked in a Oregon State Liquor Store in about 1970. It
|
||
wasn't kept on the shelves and there were very special regulations about
|
||
who could acquire it, but it did exist.
|
||
- Jerry Gaiser
|
||
|
||
"Everclear:
|
||
It's not just for breakfast anymore!"
|
||
- Brian B. Young
|
||
[I love it -- AjD]
|
||
________________________________________________________________________
|
||
|
||
Thanks to everybody who replied and clarified.
|
||
AjD ajd@itl.itd.umich.edu
|
||
|
||
|