"Ian Hoare" wrote:

> 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.


Thankyou for this

Ruiseart.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.amitar.com.au/~druid1/RavensWing.html
"Mist Covered Mountains" new CD from RavensWing available now
http://gdosc.bravepages.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~