Powdered Alcohol
Intro: Powdered Alcohol
Contrary to what suspicious lawmakers may think, powdered alcohol is not the herald to the apocalypse. In April of 2014, a form of American-made powdered alcohol was approved for sale... with its approval quickly rescinded due to what I'd imagine to be bureaucratic red tape by the US Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.
Their belief was that its creators are degenerates who were plotting the downfall of American society, starting by getting everyone drunk: people could surreptitiously consume it or trick others into consuming it, mimic (and thus promote) drug use by snorting it, engage teenagers in underaged drinking with their kid-friendly flavors and packaging... the uninformed, paranoid list goes on and on.
Since you can't buy it yet, why not just make it yourself? After the initial hubbub over powdered alcohol arose, Popular Science was kind enough to provide a recipe, but their actual instructions were somewhat lacking.
My powdered alcohol isn't technically powdered alcohol; it's alcohol that has been trapped in powder. Yes, semantics. But it's light, dry, and if enough is consumed, you'll be six ways to Sunday drunk* in no time!**
*Please drink... uh, eat responsibly.
**This is false, as you'll need to eat a lot. A lot.
STEP 1: What You'll Need
Ingredients:
Alcohol - use a high proof liquor. If you can get something akin to Everclear, use that - you'll need less powder to create an effective product. I used Bacardi 151, since we can't legally obtain 190 proof Everclear in California. The thing with the proof is that you can't think of it like a shot - you aren't taking a traditional shot. No one, aside from 21 year old frat boys (I was one, so I should know) likes taking shots of that stuff. It's nasty. But the more alcohol you start off with, the less you'll have to eat to get drunk.
Maltodextrin - this is the powder you'll be using to absorb the alcohol. I used N-Zorbit, a tapioca maltodextrin. Other accounts of this recipe insist that other types won't work, but I was unable to test others out.
Tools:
Mixing bowl
Whisk
Sifter
Food processor (small, if available)
STEP 2: Measure!
Measure out the alcohol and maltodextrin; one shot of booze weighs approximately 30 grams, for which you'll need roughly 100 grams of maltodextrin. It's fairly light so it'll be a pretty sizable mound of powder.
STEP 3: Mix and Mash!
Dump the maltodextrin into a bowl and while whisking, slowly pour the booze into the bowl. It'll clump up substantially, but just keep whisking. You'll need to mash up the clumps to create more surface area to have more of the loose maltodextrin absorb the moisture. Add more maltodextrin as needed; the mixture needs to be dry to touch before proceeding. Ideally, you'll end up with small dry "chips" of the mixture.
(I tried mixing the booze and maltodextrin directly in the food processor, but ended up with a large, sticky, taffy-like mass that wouldn't easily grind into a powder)
STEP 4: Blend!
Pour the "chips" into the food processor. After a few cycles of alternating grinding/chopping, I added more maltodextrin; a heaping spoonful should do the trick.
You'll end up with varying-sized clumps of the powdered booze. The larger ones presumably held more of the actual alcohol; I sifted the powder from the clumps and just kept grinding the larger clumps (with a tad more maltodextrin) until they were small enough to mix in easily with the powder.
When opening up the food processor, whether to add more maltodextrin or when finished grinding, take care; my first time, I got a healthy whiff of 151 that almost made me gag.
On to the taste test...
STEP 5: Put It in Your Mouth
The end product as pictured is one shot's worth of Bacardi 151. That's a *lot* of powder (and from what I understand, the commercial product will be somewhat close in volume); those bureaucrats who think that people will snort it or sprinkle it into an unsuspecting foodie's soup failed to realize that the volume of the product prohibits those kinds of shenanigans.
Eager to test my creation's intoxicating properties, I put a spoonful in my mouth.
It quickly became a pasty, rum-flavored mass in my mouth. After chewing - yes, chewing, as it didn't quite dissolve in my mouth - it for a bit, it felt like caramel... only less tasty. It was brown, sticky, and relative to taking an actual shot of 151, much less pleasant (so that's saying something). Attempts at dissolving the powder in water did not make it any easier to consume, as it quickly solidified into the same lump of brown goo once it hit the water.
I'm going to give this another go. First on the list of additives is sugar - if I need to chew it to get drunk, I might as well be chewing something a little more palatable.
The end product of this Instructable is an extremely inefficient way to get drunk. After all, taking a shot or two of your favorite alcohol is far easier; I much prefer sipping a good whiskey with a splash of water. But if you're keen on getting drunk and can't be bothered (or are restricted from using) with traditional booze, I don't see why this wouldn't be a viable option!
99 Comments
WarriorStudio 9 years ago
According to chemistry, alcohol is a solution...
kabunkkabunk 4 years ago
GrumpyOldGoat 9 years ago
According to some people, alcohol is a problem.
Can it be the solution to the problem at the same time?
thirtytwoutside 9 years ago
Reminds me of something Homer Simpson once said!
jhope2 9 years ago
I like your logic.
SlinkySchnitzelChipolata 9 years ago
Haha, this made it worth reading all the comments!
shadec 9 years ago
Not pure alcohol. In the case of this rum, then it is a solution of ethanol (and other stuff) in water, yes.
Snidely70448 9 years ago
The rum is not a simple solution of ethanol and water. i just learned much more than I need to about the subject and I recommend the wikipedia articles about ethyl alcohol, distillation and water-alcohol mixtures.
shadec 9 years ago
There is plenty of other stuff in there, like I said, but you could, if you ignored the flavour and colour compound components, say it's essentially a simple solution of ethanol in water.
fifer_in_the_rye 9 years ago
Um... Pedantic Point...
(Warning, Looooonnggg reply)
Not to put too fine a point on it, but it most likely would not have been the alcohol that caused the pancreas failure, but rather the massive amount of sugar in the fellow's system, and the body's refusal to process it until the "poisonous substance" (the body sees alcohol as such and tries to process it first) was processed out of the system. Diabetes is one condition that can cause such a thing, but it's not the only possibility.
"But, there's not enough sugar in a slice of rum cake to do that!" Of course there isn't. The thing is, the human body does not differentiate between the sugar one eats an hour before a slice of rum cake (or anything else), or the steak and potatoes (or whatever) consumed just before it, or whatever else was consumed before, at the same time, or after. It usually takes about a minimum of six hours to process the contents of a full stomach; that means that everything the guy ate before of after the cake, and maybe breakfast the next morning, depending on when he ate the cake, has to be processed as well, including the alcohol in the cake, which the body processes before the sugar, leaving the sugar to pile up. Plus, Every dang thing anybody eats turns to sugar in the system; that's what the body runs on. It thus most likely wasn't the alcohol, but the massive degree of blood sugar that had piled up while his body processed the alcohol that caused the problem.
That's one of the reasons why doctors tend to take a dim view of diabetics drinking habitually.
Just saying.
ManifoldSky 9 years ago
Um, if that is a pedantic point, it should be pointed out that it is not correct. First, the body does not treat alcohol as a poison. Second, processing of ingested items by the liver is NOT a linear process. It does not put one process on hold while dealing with another,. IT just does not work that way.
DennisH45 7 years ago
Metabolism and body process can and does, at time, put one drug process on hold to handle another. In the pharmaceutical or toxicological world this is called a competitive inhibitor. A classic example is treatment of ethylene glycol poisoning, which I'm not going to go further with here.
fifer_in_the_rye 9 years ago
fifer_in_the_rye 9 years ago
By the way, I never said anything about the liver. What you said about it is essentially correct, but it isn't up to the liver to decide anything. The brain makes the decisions. In this case, the decision is hardwired in, and is involuntary. As I said, go look it up for yourself.
ManifoldSky 9 years ago
Um, nonsense. First, there is no "diabetic research" supporting the claim that the body treats alcohol as a poison (whatever that means). It metabolizes it just like it metabolizes any other nutrient. If you are trying to discuss excess systemic alcohol, that is an ENTIRELY different matter, and totally irrelevant to the current claims.
Furthermore, again, the body does NOT operate on metabolites in a linear, FIFO manner, and processing of alcohol takes place in parallel with other metabolic processes.
As to the liver, it most certainly IS "up to the liver to decide". The brain has NOTHING to do with it. Processing of metabolites is NOT under direct neural control. And this is not affected by diabetes. What is affected in diabetes is that exogenous insulin or insulin promotion from the pancreas due to medication can then lead to hypoglycemia, since the liver only has a limited passing capacity, and LARGE amounts of alcohol can swamp that capacity. Note that this is NOT the same things as your original statement.
Furthermore, as pointed out numerous times, the quantity of alcohol in both this powdered form, as well as in a fruit cake, is so low as to have all but no effect on systemic glucose.
As to it being treated as a "poison", just because it is treated at high priority in the liver does not imply that it is treated as a poison. In fact, there is a substantial and growing body of evidence that not only is naturally occurring alcohol (from over-ripe fruit, etc.) a standard part of the evolutionary diet, in fact, in these types of naturally occurring quantities, it has a number of benefits to the point that many species actively seek it out. Name one other "poison" animals have evolved to actively seek out.
fifer_in_the_rye 9 years ago
Yes, I'm sure you could be right (you aren't, but you could be). Do have fun ranting, now.
fifer_in_the_rye 9 years ago
The above and this post was/are meant to be a reply to manifoldsky. By the way, sir or madam (I haven't checked which), these are my last words to you on this topic:
What I know was told to me not only by my doctor, but also by those who gave second, third, and fourth opinions, not to mention the several texts and numerous medical journals I've perused on the subject in order to stay abreast of new developments.
Alcohol is a toxin, whether you choose to believe it or not; it is recognized as such by every reputable medical establishment on this planet. Ingest enough of it at a time, and it will most assuredly kill you (about a fifth and a half of bourbon will do the job for most people). Wild animals do not seek it, they seek fallen fruit for simple subsistence reasons and get drunk from spoiled and fermented fruit found on the ground. Humans seemingly have always loved to get drunk, so they did and do seek it. That doesn't mean it isn't a poison or that the body doesn't consider it to be thus. You would know those facts if you had looked it up. You have obviously failed (or refused?) to do so.
Sugar is processed in exactly the way I described. Your outline of liver function is essentially correct, but you miss several key points, and make a particularly egregious error: the liver, sir or madam, does not make decisions; it cannot think or solve problems. The ruling organ is in fact the brain, a section of which rules involuntary functions. Yes, the liver secretes a chemical which acts as a trigger for the pancreas, but to saythat that is ho2w it all works is a vast oversimplification, and is mosyt assuredly not an example of decision-making in the liver. An augmenting signal is required from the brain in order for the trigger to be acted upon in the way indicated, which you would know if you had bothered to look it up, which you obviously have not. These are concepts that are taught at the sixth-grade level (roughly ages 10 through 11 though actual ages vary) in the United States, by the way.
Please take this as an attempt to teach a very bright mind, rather than an ad hominem attack. I will speak or post no more in this thread on this wildly tangential subtopic.
NickS21 8 years ago
Why are you still trolling.
TeleDex 9 years ago
All I can say is -- WHY?
GinaP1 9 years ago
After coming back from a long trip, with multiple flights through awful storms, and having to pay $16 per drink at every airport, I'd buy it just to keep from getting bankrupted while being held captive at airports, sporting events,and hotels. And what about those times in which you're trapped at hideous obligatory functions with nary a drink in sight (fundamentalist wedding receptions w/ sparking apple juice, WTF)? It's just nice to have a little more control over one's environment, that's all.