Science News reports this week on a series of experiments that should be of great interest to bartenders and martini drinkers alike. The scientific findings have implications for the flavor of vodka, and how those flavors differ if you’re sipping well vodka (and all its impurities) or the fine (read: more expensive) stuff.
From the article:
Some of vodka’s water molecules form cagelike structures around molecules of ethanol, a research team reports online May 21 in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Disrupting these cages — via impurities or perhaps even shaking — may affect taste, says study coauthor Dale W. Schaefer of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio.
Belvedere and Oval appear to have more of this caged ethanol than other brands do, the team reports
For the research, spectroscopic methods were employed for the following brands: Skyy, Belvedere, Stolichnaya, Grey Goose and Oval. The article doesn’t mention if Belvedere or Oval funded this research, but certainly this is good news for their marketing departments.
In other alcohol news, Science News reported on a Brown University December 2009 finding that bourbon drinkers have worse hangovers than vodka drinkers. Wish you had learned this in school? Perhaps the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) has the right idea with its new education program for kids, called The Science Inside Alcohol.
Perhaps this class will teach the valuable lesson of alcohol dehydrogenase – that clever enzyme in our livers that breaks down alcohol – but not fast enough to keep up with us if we’re throwing back pints at the pub. In fact, women, those of Asian or Native American descent, and older people all have less of this enzyme and therefore get drunk more easily and experience more adverse alcohol-related effects on the liver. Or perhaps the class delves into the science of bartending – the cocktail labrats that make up the molecular mixology movement.
The cage-like structure of vodka is a fascinating finding for those who enjoy libations, and a rare glimpse of science in the world of alcohol. Most research goes into the gadgets (the new portable alcohol tester to determine the strength of your drink) or the pills (Russians have created a new Vodka pill), and most websites dedicated to science and alcohol cover alcohol abuse or distillation practices.
Luckily, I’ve found one more alcohol-science tidbit from Scientific American…. Have some wilting flowers lying around and a leftover cocktail from the party the night before? Put your hands together – alcohol and citrus sodas have been found to extend the lives of vased flowers!
Related:
Wired’s Drug and Alcohol Science pages:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/tag/drugs-alcohol/
Molecular mixology:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/dining/10drin.html
The Science Inside Alcohol course:
http://www.aaas.org/programs/education/ScienceInside/alcohol/alcohol.shtml
Alcohol keeps flowers fresh:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-vodka-citrus-sodas-keep-flowers-fresh
Alcohol Dehydrogenase page from UMontana:
http://www.montana.edu/wwwai/imsd/alcohol/Vanessa/vwliver.htm
Image from:
martiniloungenow.com
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Michael Steinberg
doctorwascher
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