Salut/Hi Ruiseart agus Ceit,

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

> 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?

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.

--
All the Best
Ian Hoare
http://www.souvigne.com
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