Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
h a l f b a k e r y
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Chemistry Bar

Make instant beer and liquor and cocktails
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Imagine that there is one big tank of pure alcohol, and little ingredients for every flavor, like rum, wiskey, beer, etc... and the fruit juices and sugar and water and everything that is in every common kind of liquor. And there is a database telling how much of each is in every kind of drink, and it mixes them all together in the right proportion. Sure there would be a can of worms somewhere for the synth-o-tequila. But beer would always be some proportion of water, alcohol, hops oil, malt oil, barley oil, etc. depending on the relative composition of your favorite kind of beer. ... Maybe just the beer ingredients could be in a home version, for a nano-brewery that makes instant beer, just add cold water! ... or "house" wine (grape juice + coloring + alcohol).
mr2560, May 31 2003

Whiskey info http://www.fife.50m...sh-distilleries.htm
i'll put up a scottish site to placate the Jocks. [etherman, Oct 04 2004]

Liqueur Extracts http://www.northern...er.com/liqueur.html
[Worldgineer, Dec 30 2005]

[link]






       I think you're laboring under a misconception about what imparts flavor to different kinds of liquors. Bourbon isn't (booze plus corn mash flavor) and wine isn't (watery booze plus grape flavor). Each recipe gives its own unique flavor, aroma and "feel" to the resulting bev.   

       If your idea is to fake it, well, best of luck. I don't think anyone who enjoys these products will appreciate your weird imitation.
snarfyguy, May 31 2003
  

       What's //wiskey//?
thumbwax, May 31 2003
  

       <bad joke> bloke walks into a bar and asks for a pint of adenosine triphosphate barman says, that's 80p please</bad joke>
neilp, Jul 25 2003
  

       I just got that, must be my not reading it aloud, and my tendency to pronounce eighty "aydy".
brewer, Jun 11 2004
  

       whiskey has two spellings: Whiskey in Ireland and Whisky in Scotland. But they do both have an 'H' <mr2560> But as every Irishman knows Scotch isn't whiskey its pish :oP   

       Cue Braveheart style warfare.
etherman, Jun 11 2004
  

       Shoot, I was going to post exactly this idea except use an alcohol + water mixture base and dried ingredients.   

       [snarf], I believe you are mistaken. You can boil the alcohol and water off any drink, then add it back and it will be the same drink. Therefore you can sell the small amount of concentrated drink and the alcohol and water seperately. The bar would save in shipping and storage. There may be some other chemicals that boil off as well, but as long as they are measured and added back to the mix you'll end up with the same drink.
Worldgineer, Dec 30 2005
  

       I have to disagree with that one, [World]. At least in the interpretation that it would be the same drink. Boiling would alter some flavors, and likely some chemical makeup also. Aging and grouped flavors also are an important part of a given drink's signature flavor.   

       [neilp], I just now got "80p, please". Great joke.
normzone, Dec 30 2005
  

       Boiling shouldn't alter anything chemically if you reduce pressure rather than increase temperature. Aging is usually just a chemical process - use aged liquor in your extract and you'll get the same thing. I'm not sure what you mean by "grouped flavors".
Worldgineer, Dec 30 2005
  

       tell that to a cabbage.
po, Dec 30 2005
  

       There is a company in France that will extracts (vacuum distillation) the alcohol from good vintages of wine in order to satisfy the non-alcoholic gourmet market. They have discovered that odd things happen to the flavor, and that the supposedly pure alcohol produced as a side product has a "grapey" smell.   

       Hard to say what could be taken out besides the ethanol or water.
humanbean, Dec 31 2005
  

       I'm not agreeing with [World] or the author on this. I think it would be very difficult to extract an essence that could be reconstituted without a nearly industrial level process perhaps even requiring redistallation.   

       Distallation itself, whether batch or continuous, never produces a concentrate of the congeners that make up the flavor and body components that yield the distinct character of a given spirit (other than vodka which is distilled to a very high proof and then diluted with water for bottling).   

       The congeners are generally volatile compounds all of which have different boiling, or flash, temperatures. The heads or foreshots (bad things, such as methanol and acetone) flash earlier than ethyl alcohol and the tails or feints (generally good, aromatic flavor essences, such as turpene, esters, phenolics and other "higher" alcohols whose long-chain molecules, in limited amounts, give an oily quality and body to sprits) flash later than ethyl alcohol, so, the act of distillation results in the exact finished product and any further reduction like that needed to create a reconstitutable concentrate will result in a completely different product and one mostly devoid of the elements or combination of elements that define a given spirit.   

       It'd be somewhat akin to trying to make a reconstitutable gasoline in that the components may not be reduceable at all or more than 2:1 or so.   

       (Apologies for the ridiculous run-on sentence in the third graf.) (Sometimes the "higher" alcohols are referred to as fusel oils. With fusels, a dab'll do ya' as in quantity they are nasty but in precise moderation they add distinction despite their harsh flavors and tendency to incite vascular headaches [an empirical observation of my own]. Fusel is, incidentally and, perhaps incitefully, German for "rotgut.")
bristolz, Dec 31 2005
  

       So is the difficulty in fractional distillation - not being able to only pull the water and ethenol out? I figure if you can precisely seperate out each volatile, you can add everything but the ethenol and water back into the concentrate. But if it isn't possible to seperate them then we have a problem.
Worldgineer, Dec 31 2005
  

       Yes, I believe that that is the problem but it is, at very best, a guess.
bristolz, Dec 31 2005
  
      
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