On The Burning Away (of Alcohol)

My favorite thing about the beginning of winter is the way that even the most moist (moistest?!) of my aromatic pipe tobaccos burn down to a powdery grey ash in the bottom of my bowl. Note that this is something I like about the BEGINNING of winter. It stays consistent throughout winter, but in my opinion, no one has a favorite phenomenon regarding any other part of winter aside from the beginning.

No one ever said, "You know what I like the most about the dead middle of winter?!"

And yes, I realize that winter doesn't start until December 21st or thereabouts, but it was too cold to stand barefoot and shirtless on my back porch this morning at 8:30am, and so it is officially "winter" to me. This is northern Florida. I have a low threshold for "cold" weather.

With the colder weather comes the desire for warm beverages and hot food. My previous entry explained the process for making whiskeyaki meatballs in the crockpot, and I thought I'd take a moment to explain some important science behind cooking with alcohol.

It has been said that alcohol "burns away" when used in cooking. This is very true when you are like me and take great pleasure in lighting things on fire in the kitchen (note to self: provide link to Lance's video of my kitchen counter on fire). If you ignite the alcohol in a dish like bananas foster, the alcohol does indeed burn. Whilst burning is a chemical reaction, unignited alcohol in cooking merely evaporates, which is simply a change of state. Alcohol and water will evaporate separately near their respective boiling points rather than boil and evaporate together at the same boiling point.

I've taken great care in researching this because I enjoy mulled wine, but I see absolutely no reason to drink wine if it has lost its inebriative effect. Alcohol, went mixed with water (remember, scotch is only 40% alcohol, wine between 8% and 20%, there must be something else in there and some amount of water) will evaporate at a point between the boiling points of alcohol and water.

I've never been one for the metric system, so forgive me if I use English measurements. Alcohol evaporates near 80 C which is roughly 170 degrees F -- water at 100 C and 212 degrees F. For the purpose of making mulled wine, I tested my crockpot earlier this week with water. On the "warm" setting, the temperature never rose about 110 degrees F; on the "low" setting it topped off around 140 or 150 after an hour or two. The optimal serving temperature for hot beverages (in my opinion) would be somewhere between 120 and 140. Since alcohol doesn't evaporate until 170, we should be safe to switch back and forth between "warm" and "low" to maintain optimal serving temperature of the mulled wine without fear of complete evaporation.

Of course, I imagine there would be some evaporation of the alcohol just as you can't leave a pot of water simmering below boiling without reducing the water somewhat, so it would be best to leave the lid on the crockpot. It's too early in the morning to extend my research too much further. These are just useful suggestions and rules of thumb.

Interestingly enough, I cooked my whiskeyaki meatballs yesterday and have left the crockpot between low and warm. Even this morning after a good 12 hours, bringing the stirring spoon to my nose yields a pleasant burning sensation in my nostrils as the remaining scotch evaporates. It is very important when cooking with alcohol to either not breath too deeply while doing so OR to have a designated driver.