Alcohol content of beverages

The convention for identifying the alcoholic content of beverages is proof So, 100 proof is 50% ethyl alcohol 86 proof scotch is 43% ethyl alcohol, and so on. Divide by two. So pure ethyl alcohol is 200 proof... 

Distillation is an ancient unit operation, and has been widely practiced for thousands of years. Early applicetions used crude vaporization and condensation equipment, often for concentrating the alcoholic content of beverages, The first vertical columnar continuous distillation still was developed by Cellier-Blumenthal in France in 1813. Perrier introduced an early version of the bubble-cep tray in England in 1822, Packings were used as early as 1820 by a technologist named Clement who used glass balls in an alcohol still. Coffey developed the first sieve tray column in 1830. The first book on fundamentals of distillation was La Rectification de I alcohol by Ernest Sorel in 1893. 

During the first quarter of the twentieth century, the application of distillation expanded from a tool for enhancing the alcohol content of beverages into the prime separation technique in the chemical industry. This expansion accelerated once distillation was recognized as an effective means of separating crude oil into various products, From there, the application of distillation spread into the majority of chemical processes, Detailed descriptions of the history of distillation, including illustrations of historic exhibits, are given by Fair (1), Underwood (2), and Forbes (3). 

The guidelines on alcohol intake, the prudent upper limits of habitual consumption, are summarized in Table 7.2, and the alcohol content of beverages in Table 7.3. 

The physical properties of alcohol Production of alcohol Estimation of alcohol content of beverages and monitoring of intake 593... 

The reasons for determining the alcohol content of foods and beverages are many. A brief examination was carried out by Amelio (1), large parts of which are reexamined here. 

The concept of this process has been demonstrated for lowering or increasing the alcohol content of distilled spirits by using water vapor or ethanol vapor in the sweep stream, respectively. In either case, this vapor arbitration action combined with the inherent selectivity of the membrane resulted in virtually complete preservation of the subtle character of the beverage, but in a more concentrated form due to the lower net volume of the retentate product (Lee, 1993). Similar results may be anticipated in other volume reduction applications involving high-value volatile feedstocks. 

Fermentation and Distillation Expressing the Alcohol Content of a Beverage... 

Oxidation is the process by which the energy in foods is released in the form of heat and work. In this respect, alcohol liberates about 75 calories in each half ounce. Therefore, one standard drink of whiskey has about 75 calories because all the calories in distilled spirits are from alcohol content. However, beverages such as beer provide calories from foods such as proteins and carbohydrates as well as alcohol. A regular 12-ounce, 4%-alcohol beer has about 150 calories, and a comparable amount t>f the commercial light beers has 95-135 calorics. Light beers have fewer calorics primarily because they contain less alcohol. 

The alcohol content of a beverage may be expressed by volume or by weight. 

Liqueurs are alcoholic beverages with an alcohol content of approx. 15-20% by vol. and a sugar content of at least 10 g/100 ml and which can be flavoured with fruits, spices, extracts and other flavouring materials. 

Spirits are a class of alcoholic beverage with an alcohol content of 20% or more, above the range achievable solely by fermentation. Thus, the spirits... 

Soft drink and alcoholic beverages contain much less lead than fruit and vegetables juices. The lead concentration of Hungarian wines was always lower than literature values due to the fact that capsules containing lead were never permitted in Hungary. The median lead content of beverages (1990-1991) was <1-120 pg/kg and range of maximum contents was 11-800 pg/kg (Sohar, 1996). 

A decrease in attention performance was associated with thujone content of beverages administered to healthy volunteers at concentrations of 0,10, or 100 mg/1 thujone in alcohol, leading to an average thujone dose of 0, 0.026, or 0.26 mg/kg (doses were adjusted to provide equal amounts of alcohol in each dose). The thujone concentration was associated with a temporary counteracting of the anxiolytic effect of alcohol (Dettling et al. 2004). 

To estimate the alcoholic content of a beverage, or any complex biological fluid, it is usually necessary to separate the alcohol from the medium either by distillation, microdiffusion, dialysis, or gas-liquid chromatography. 

Amounts. Bertrand and Silberstein (1949-1952) considered Flanzy s (1935a, b) values only approximately correct because of the procedure used. Their range and averages, however, were approximately the same as Flanzy s. Jauker (1937) found only 0.5 to 10 mg. per liter in four wines and none in three others. Data on the methyl alcohol content of other alcoholic beverages were also given. Coltescu et al. (1941) reported as much as 0.3 g. of methyl alcohol per 100 ml. in wines of hybrid vines. 

Malt wine is made from fermented malt extract (the hot water extract of whole meal malt). Mal-ton wine is made in the same way, except that sucrose is added at 1.8-times the amount of malt in order to increase the sugar and alcohol content of the wine. The wort is then soured by the action of lactic acid bacteria (0.6-0.8% lactic acid, final concentration). The acid fermentation is stopped by heating the wort to 78 °C and, after inoculation with a pure yeast culture, the wort is fermented to an alcohol content of 10-13%. The beverage thus formed has the character of a dessert wine, but is different because of its high content of lactic acid and its malt extract flavor. Mead is an alcoholic liquor made of fermented honey, malt and spices, or just of honey and water (not more than 21 water per kg of honey). Since early times, mead has been widely consumed in Europe and, even today, it is enjoyed the most of all the wine beverages in eastern and northern Europe. 

Table 2. Congeneric Content of Various Distilled Alcoholic Beverages ...

In this process the addition of water vapor to the sweep stream can be controlled so that the water activity of the gas phase equals that of the beverage. When this occurs, there is no transport of water across the membrane. The water content of both the beverage feed and the sweep stream is kept constant. These conditions must be maintained for optimum alcohol reduction. The pervaporation system controls the feed, membrane, airstream moisture level, and ethanol recovery functions. An operational system has been developed (13). 

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