Alcoholic beverages making

Chloral hydrate, a sedative sometimes administered to calm a patient prior to a surgical procedure, has also been used for less reputable purposes. Adding it to an alcoholic beverage makes a so-called knock-out drink, causing an individual who drinks it to pass out. Because it is addictive and care must be taken in its administration, it is a controlled substance. 

The plants and animals we have chosen to use as foods naturally contain, as we have already noted, thousands of chemicals that have no nutritional role, and when we eat to acquire the nutritionally essential chemicals we are automatically exposed to this huge, mostly organic, chemical reservoir. Of course, human beings have always manipulated foods to preserve them or to make them more palatable. Processes of food preservation, such as smoking, the numerous ways we have to cook and otherwise prepare food for consumption, and the age-old methods of fermentation used to make bread, alcoholic beverages, cheeses and other foods, cause many complex chemical changes to take place, and so result in the introduction of uncounted numbers of compounds that are not present in the raw agricultural products. 

Ethanol has been known to humans and consumed by humans in the form of alcoholic beverages since prehistory. As noted at the beginning of this chapter, the Bible makes several references to wine and its consumption. 

It is recommended that about half of the energy intake should be in the form of carbohydrates, a third at most in the form of fat, and the rest as protein. The fact that alcoholic beverages can make a major contribution to daily energy intake is often overlooked. Ethanol has a caloric value of about 30 kj g (see p. 320). 

There is evidence that the Greeks, Egyptians, Hebrews, Japanese, Chinese, and Russians made alcoholic beverages thousands of years ago. Alcohol (ethanol, ethyl alcohol, and grain alcohol) is produced by yeast fermentation of sugar in fruits and grains to make wine, beer, or a variety of alcoholic spirits, including gin, vodka, and scotch. 

The wine industry in the United States has not seen even growth it has been characterized by periods of rapid expansion interspersed with times of little growth. Our nationwide experiment designed to prohibit production, transport, and sale of alcoholic beverages effectively destroyed the commercial wineries and fine varietal vineyards of this country. As a side effect, however, it introduced many people to the mysteries of making wine at home and the reconstitution of fine varietal grape vineyards... 

For example, let s calculate A H° for the fermentation of glucose to make ethyl alcohol (ethanol), the reaction that occurs during the production of alcoholic beverages ... 

For regular consumers of alcoholic beverages, wine and beer may make a significant contribution to dietary lead intake and this is reflected in the higher blood lead levels found for drinkers. Lead in beer is also absorbed more readily from the gastrointestinal tract than lead from the rest of the diet. A survey of lead in wines and beers from lead-capped bottles in 1982/1983 showed that about 90% of canned and bottled beers sampled contained < 10 /v,g/l and that nearly half the draught beers sampled contained > 10 /v,g/l 4% contained > 100 /v,g/l. All wines sampled directly from the bottle contained < 250 /ig/1.12... 

Most alcohol is sold as 95% ethanol-5 % water since it forms an azeotrope at that temperature. To obtain absolute alcohol, a third component, such as benzene, must be added during the distillation. This tertiary azeotrope carries over the water and leaves the pure alcohol behind. Common industrial alcohol is denatured, and additives are purposely included to make it nondrinkable and therefore not subject to the high taxes of the alcoholic beverage industry. 

Caution of Methyl Alcohol (Wood Alcohol) Methanol is commonly added to the rectified spirit, which makes it unfit to drink. Mixing methanol with alcoholic beverages results in methanol poisoning. Methanol is metabolized to formaldehyde and formic acid by aldehyde dehydrogenase. High blood levels (750 mg/dL) cause severe poisoning, which leads to blindness and even death. 

My wife enjoys a cosmopolitan martini now and then, and I make it for her with a splash of pomegranate juice. That brings me back to the issue of which alcoholic beverage is best for heart protection. The short, simple answer is that all kinds of drinks provide benefits equally. It turns out that the alcohol itself yields good things for the body. 

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