Pernod

[leigh47]

Why, when water is added to the drink Pernod does it change to an opaque white colour? The reason I ask other than general interest is that twice when ordering a Pernod in a bar it has not changed colour when water was added. No one has been able to say why.

[ludwig]

don't know, but perhaps it's to do with the temperature of the water.

[fo3nix]

no it's not to do with the termperature.

Pernod contains the same chemicals as Greek Ouzo etc. (cant remember its name, but something to do with anaseed hence its distinctive flavour).

Basically its the water that reacts with that chemical that causes it to change its properties to become cloudy.

In the book "The Last Word" from New Scientist, this is explained.. don't have it with me right now but that's basically the explanation given.

The book's good for random science type questions; you may find it interesting :)

[Xollob]

From the Wikipedia article on ouzo:

"When water or ice is added to ouzo it turns milky white; this is because the key aromatic compounds known as terpenes are soluble in alcohol but not water. Diluting ouzo to less than around 40% ABV causes the terpenes to crystalise out of the solution and diffract light."

This answers the question why ouzo (or Pernod) turns cloudy, but not why it doesn't go cloudy. Sorry!

[jake-the-peg]

I would therefore imagine 1 of two possibilities are the case

1) the drink was not sufficiently diluted for this to happen

2) the drink does not contain sufficient terpenes

if (2) either they were not there to start with (fake Pernod) or something happened to them - Old stock prehaps (do terpenes break down with heat or light?)

[fo3nix]

i would think it didnt change colour because there wasnt enough of the chemicals in the pernod. was the bar using a watered-down variety to start with? either that or its anaseed-tasting water ;)

idea: have several rounds of the stuff, and if you're not wasted then its probably not the proper stuff.

[leigh47]

Thank you all for your answers.

jake-the-peg. Answer 2 seems the most likely answer.

and the comment about old stock and the possable efects of heat or light.

What I did not mention in the original question is that on both occasions when there was no colour change the bottle was mounted on an optic measure, unusual as it is usually in the screw top bottle at the back of the shelf. By the way I did contact the Pernod distributors for the UK and they could not explain the reason and seemed to be very concerned about it.