Removing alcohol

It depends on the quality of the wine. I have found that Mouton Rothschild sometimes needs to be boiled for hours and hours. You could perhaps use a microwave for a faster elimination, which worked quite well when I tried this method on a 1955 Château Gillette Crème de Tête last weekend. It devoloped a magnificent taste of roasted marshmallows and hot Dr. Pepper on the palate. But be sure to give that baby at least 700 watts for half an hour or so.

Seriously, you can remove alcohol from wine or any other alcoholic beverage by boiling it - thats how they made de-alc'd beer before the days of inverse osmosis. The time to fully de-alc will depend on the content of alcohol, the quantity of wine, the shape of the container you boil it in and, of course, the time you will need to bring the whole thing to a boil. You could try to accelerate the process by having your local pyromaniac ignite the evaporating alcohol with a lighter though(«Château Pétrus flambé»). But DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME FOLKS!

"Ruiseart agus Ceit" wrote in news:40a4af15$0$2299$ snipped-for-privacy@news.syd.swiftdsl.com.au...

] Hallo, ] ] Just a quickie for you wine experts :) Does boiling remove the alcohol ] from mead/wine, and if so, how long should it be boiled?

You must boil it for many hours, in order to remove all liquid, leaving only a sludgy residue. Then just add water back in!

Just kidding. Don't boil yer wine. Spoils the taste.

-E

"Emery Davis" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@address.com...

BTW, once you have produced the sludgy residue, you are in the posession of a unique and very versatile stock that can be used in many ways: Just whisk in a spoonful of butter and you'll have a near-perfect «Sauce beurre blanc», ready to serve with any fish.

Thanks for this :)

Ruiseart. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Salut/Hi Ruiseart agus Ceit,

le/on Fri, 14 May 2004 19:48:42 +0800, tu disais/you said:-

Despite what others have said, I'm afraid you cannot remove all alcohol from wine just by boiling it. What happens with mixtures of liquids which form contsant boiling point mixtures, (this is a mixture where both liquids evaporate in such a way as their proportions do not change) is that when you start boiling, the liquid which is present in larger proportion will boil off first, and then the mixture boils away, keeping the same proportion of both. Alcohol and water (major components of wine/mead) make a constant boiling mixture, and so when you heat wine, first alcohol boils off (as the "cbm" contains less than 10% alcohol) and then when the cmb proportions are reached, both boil together. So that means that the only way to remove ALL alcohol is to boil the wine/liquid dry.

To take an example (I don't remember what the proportions of alcohol/water in a cbm are, but for the sake of the example, I'll call it 5% alcohol), Say you heat 1 kilo of wine at 13% alcohol (130 gms) to boiling point. First of all more alcohol than water will evaporate, until you end up at 5% alcohol. As a complete guess, let's say 80 gms alcohol and 20 gms water, leaving 50 gms alcohol and 850 gms water. From then on, further boiling - even to half volume - will only reduce BOTH components in equal proportion, so you would lose 25 gms alcohol and 425 gms water, leaving still 25 gms alcohol etc.

Sorry to those who thought otherwise, but this is simple physical chemistry.

Is this a serious question?

We assume boiling would ruin the taste of wine.

You can buy alcohol free wine, I have a bottle I bought 6 or 7 years ago. Never opened it, looks like crusty old grape juice, but I understand alcohol free wine tastes more like wine than unfermented grape juice. Maybe one day I'll actually taste some.

If you're cooking with wine, don't worry about the alcohol for non drinking people, it will all burn off.

I doubt mead comes without alcohol, though. But who knows.

Not according to Ian? Anders

Thankyou for this :)

Ruiseart. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Certainly most of it will. Just don't mention the rest!