What is it about alcohol?

It is quite amazing how little knowledge of beverage alcohol exists among those who would seek to regulate its consumption. Journalists who report and comment on the topic seem to display little knowledge either.

We read or hear comments about “masking the taste of alcohol” when alcohol is practically tasteless. We hear about “designer drinks”, as if only one sector of the alcohol beverage “designs” drinks. Some beverages are described as “hard”.

Until all understand how alcohol drinks are produced we are never going to have any perspective nor common sense in the discussion about “binge drinking”, whether by youth or their parents.

All alcohol is fermented

Let’s understand the basics. Alcohol is one of the easiest products to produce – just take a bunch of grapes, crush them with their skins, and place in a jar, and wait a day or two. Voila! An alcoholic beverage!

Alcohol is the result of the natural process of fermentation of a sugar by a yeast. This process is one of the earliest organic reactions employed by humans. The intoxicating effects of ethanol consumption have been known since before recorded history.

Source your sugar from malted barley or wheat – you produce a beer. I wonder how many people know that an important process in making bread, letting the yeast rise, is fermentation and that alcohol is produced during this stage of bread making? Of course, all the alcohol is burned off in the oven so we don’t end up with alcoholic bread!

Source the sugar from grapes, we end up with wine; from apples, cider, from pears, perry. You can ferment any fruit. Indeed, one of the first so-called “alcopops” on Australia was actually made by fermenting lemons.

The result of this natural process is a mixture of flavours from the original fruit or grain and the yeast, alcohol (CH3CH2OH), and carbon dioxide. It doesn’t matter what the source sugar is – the alcohol produced is the same: CH3CH2OH.

Spirit producers then use a process called distillation to concentrate the flavours and the alcohol. Essentially, the distillation process removes water. The alcohol remains the same. Distil wine – you produce brandy. Distil beer (yes, a beer) and you produce a whisky. There is no magic change to the alcohol – it is still CH3CH2OH. And the effect on the body is the same whether you consume beer, wine, cider, spirits, or ready-to-drink beverages.

That police breathalyser does not discriminate between drinks – just the total amount of alcohol that has entered the bloodstream.

Just imagine that conversation:

“The reading shows your BAC to be 0.08 which is above the legal limit of 0.05!”

“But officer, I have only been drinking red wine.”

“Ah. In that case, best be going along your way then.”