4 ms·

Frankly I don't understand why grocery stores don't just sell undenatured purified food-grade ethanol. There's plenty of supply, and if people could be taught h

Frankly I don't understand why grocery stores don't just sell undenatured purified food-grade ethanol. There's plenty of supply, and if people could be taught how to use it, there would be tonnes of demand. This isn't the 19th century, we all have running water to mix our ethanol with if we want "straight" vodka.

DrScump 9y ago
It's apparently quite expensive[0]. Once you get maximum purity that distillation allows, it's not worth the cost to process further just for recreational use. [0] https://www.quora.com/Where-can-you-buy-ethanol https://www.quora.com/Where-can-you-buy-ethanol
tptacek 9y ago
Dave Arnold has a spiel about how the best vodka he’s had was diluted potable lab ethanol.
- dfox 9y ago
  Making drinks from lab grade ethanol seems to be an popular past-time activity for almost any vaguely natural science Ph.D. student I ever known. Usually it also involves fractional destilation of lab grade denatured ethanol (often "specially denatured ethanol" which is somewhat simpler to "dedenaturate") into potable ethanol. It is somewhat notable that physics people tend to end up with simple physical processes for that (pour ethanol on baking tray and bake in baking oven for X amount of time, light it on fire, if flame is not visible you have potable ethanol) while people coming from chemical sciences tend to build incredible complex contraptions from lab glassware (I've seen such contraption which converted normal denatured alcohol into gin or jaegemester-like liquor depending on its software configuration as a continuous process, it was built by obviously bored pharmaceutics Ph.D. students, filled two lab benches and involved two Sun Ultra 5s for computer control)
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Reagent-grade 95% ethanol isn't denatured. Because then it wouldn't be reagent-grade. What we had in biochem labs had tax-exempt labels.
- refurb 9y ago
  At my old job we used 200 proof, undenatured ethanol by the gallon. A bunch of forms had be signed as it was untaxed (~$10/gal, $50/gal with tax). I did try tasting it and it was awful. Pure ethanol is near odorless, but gains a smell from the oxidation of ethanol to acetaldehyde. The lab grade stuff had a very strong smell.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    You don't want to drink that stuff. It contains traces of benzene. Benzene blocks the 95% ethanol/5% water azeotrope, which has a lower boiling point than ethanol.
    - microcolonel 9y ago
      Would it contain those traces if it were produced with molecular sieves rather than benzene?
      - mirimir 9y ago
        Probably not. But distillation is still the norm, isn't it?
        microcolonel 9y ago
        I don't know, but I do know there are facilities producing food and pharmaceutical grade 200 proof spirits using molecular sieves for the last 3-5% of water (I'm guessing followed by another distillation to remove the sieve particulate).
        mirimir 9y ago
        Very cool. My knowledge is obviously dated. I recall adding molecular sieves to absolute ethanol to keep it dry. Bu I didn't know that had gone commercial.
    - refurb 9y ago
jpatokal 9y ago
Marketing. People want notionally imperial Russian vodkas like Smirnoff and frou-frou pseudo-French brands like Grey Goose, not Costco "undenatured purified food-grade alcohol".
kornakiewicz 9y ago
I do not know how it looks like in States, but in my home country (Poland) it's quite easy to buy rectified spirit (90%+ ) in a normal grocery store for cooking or so. But nobody uses it to produce vodka by mixing with tap water, expect teens 20 years ago. Never seen it in Spain though and definitely not in Finland, when I live now and it's impossible to buy a wine after 8pm.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  I guess it should come as no surprise that the birthplace of directly-marketed neutral grain spirits sells it to the public. Unfortunately it seems that it's illegal in many U.S. states, all of Norway. Here in Ontario I've heard they used to sell the equivalent through the LCBO (the monopoly state retailer of spirits, recently no longer the monopoly on wine and beer), but the product pages linked from forums talking about it are dead, and the manufacturer no longer lists it on their site. I hear Everclear (major American grain ethanol brand) can be bought in Alberta.
- umanwizard 9y ago
  > nobody uses it to produce vodka by mixing with tap water Why not?
  - c-smile 9y ago
    When you mix ethanol with water it gets heated up : https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d859/b2900e6d66cf71d79601dd9c463c10ae9895.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d859/b2900e6d66cf71d79601dd... Russian saying "The worst thing after drinking hot vodka is to have sex with sweaty woman". Yet, it was Dmitry Mendeleev (inventor of Periodic Table of Element) who discovered that 40% mixture of ethanol and water is the best combination. It is quite hard to achieve precise mixture ratio by hand. Yet in USSR you could buy pure drinkable spirit, here is a label of the bottle: http://incolorprint.ru/d/701905/d/1959_Спирт_Питьевой.jpg http://incolorprint.ru/d/701905/d/1959_Спирт_Питьевой.jpg Used in cases when volume matters.
    - microcolonel 9y ago

DrScump 9y ago

It's apparently quite expensive[0]. Once you get maximum purity that distillation allows, it's not worth the cost to process further just for recreational use. [0] https://www.quora.com/Where-can-you-buy-ethanol https://www.quora.com/Where-can-you-buy-ethanol

tptacek 9y ago

Dave Arnold has a spiel about how the best vodka he’s had was diluted potable lab ethanol.

dfox 9y ago
Making drinks from lab grade ethanol seems to be an popular past-time activity for almost any vaguely natural science Ph.D. student I ever known. Usually it also involves fractional destilation of lab grade denatured ethanol (often "specially denatured ethanol" which is somewhat simpler to "dedenaturate") into potable ethanol. It is somewhat notable that physics people tend to end up with simple physical processes for that (pour ethanol on baking tray and bake in baking oven for X amount of time, light it on fire, if flame is not visible you have potable ethanol) while people coming from chemical sciences tend to build incredible complex contraptions from lab glassware (I've seen such contraption which converted normal denatured alcohol into gin or jaegemester-like liquor depending on its software configuration as a continuous process, it was built by obviously bored pharmaceutics Ph.D. students, filled two lab benches and involved two Sun Ultra 5s for computer control)
- mirimir 9y ago
  Reagent-grade 95% ethanol isn't denatured. Because then it wouldn't be reagent-grade. What we had in biochem labs had tax-exempt labels.
refurb 9y ago
At my old job we used 200 proof, undenatured ethanol by the gallon. A bunch of forms had be signed as it was untaxed (~$10/gal, $50/gal with tax). I did try tasting it and it was awful. Pure ethanol is near odorless, but gains a smell from the oxidation of ethanol to acetaldehyde. The lab grade stuff had a very strong smell.
- mirimir 9y ago
  You don't want to drink that stuff. It contains traces of benzene. Benzene blocks the 95% ethanol/5% water azeotrope, which has a lower boiling point than ethanol.
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    Would it contain those traces if it were produced with molecular sieves rather than benzene?
    - mirimir 9y ago
      Probably not. But distillation is still the norm, isn't it?
      - microcolonel 9y ago
        I don't know, but I do know there are facilities producing food and pharmaceutical grade 200 proof spirits using molecular sieves for the last 3-5% of water (I'm guessing followed by another distillation to remove the sieve particulate).
        mirimir 9y ago
        Very cool. My knowledge is obviously dated. I recall adding molecular sieves to absolute ethanol to keep it dry. Bu I didn't know that had gone commercial.
  - refurb 9y ago

jpatokal 9y ago

Marketing. People want notionally imperial Russian vodkas like Smirnoff and frou-frou pseudo-French brands like Grey Goose, not Costco "undenatured purified food-grade alcohol".

kornakiewicz 9y ago

I do not know how it looks like in States, but in my home country (Poland) it's quite easy to buy rectified spirit (90%+ ) in a normal grocery store for cooking or so. But nobody uses it to produce vodka by mixing with tap water, expect teens 20 years ago. Never seen it in Spain though and definitely not in Finland, when I live now and it's impossible to buy a wine after 8pm.

microcolonel 9y ago
I guess it should come as no surprise that the birthplace of directly-marketed neutral grain spirits sells it to the public. Unfortunately it seems that it's illegal in many U.S. states, all of Norway. Here in Ontario I've heard they used to sell the equivalent through the LCBO (the monopoly state retailer of spirits, recently no longer the monopoly on wine and beer), but the product pages linked from forums talking about it are dead, and the manufacturer no longer lists it on their site. I hear Everclear (major American grain ethanol brand) can be bought in Alberta.
umanwizard 9y ago
> nobody uses it to produce vodka by mixing with tap water Why not?
- c-smile 9y ago
  When you mix ethanol with water it gets heated up : https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d859/b2900e6d66cf71d79601dd9c463c10ae9895.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d859/b2900e6d66cf71d79601dd... Russian saying "The worst thing after drinking hot vodka is to have sex with sweaty woman". Yet, it was Dmitry Mendeleev (inventor of Periodic Table of Element) who discovered that 40% mixture of ethanol and water is the best combination. It is quite hard to achieve precise mixture ratio by hand. Yet in USSR you could buy pure drinkable spirit, here is a label of the bottle: http://incolorprint.ru/d/701905/d/1959_Спирт_Питьевой.jpg http://incolorprint.ru/d/701905/d/1959_Спирт_Питьевой.jpg Used in cases when volume matters.
  - microcolonel 9y ago