alcohol removal

[jen1979]

is there a way of removing alcohol from wine?

[andrew1707]

Freeze it. The alcohol will be the last to freeze. It might taste horrible though.

[dzug2]

On a DIY basis, unlikely

But low alcohol wine is widely sold - most people think it sucks though.

[Mosaic]

I'll take a hit for the team here.
Give it to me, I will produce alcohol-free water filtered directly through my kidneys.

[MoonRocker]

either freeze it and andrew suggests or raise it to a tempurature above 60c, then the alcohol will boil away. No idea why you'd want to do it though!

[MoonRocker]

the best way of course is to drink it!

[EDDIE51]

Sorry but freezing it will not work, the mix of alcohol and water (wine) just freezes at a slightly lower temperature it will not seperate out. Boiling it to distill the alcohol off will work but the remaing liquid will be undrinkable as it will be a mix of cooked grape juice .
You can buy low alcohol wine and alcohol free wine , low alcohol wine is just normal wine but the fermentation is stopped before the full alcohol content is reached. Alcohol free wine has the alcohol removed by a complex chemical process that you can not do at home.
The people I know who do not drink alcohol mainly drink grape juice in place of wine as they say it tastes better.

[theprof]

Oh dear, lots of misconceptions here. First of all EDDIE51 is right: straightforward freezing at home will not remove alcohol from wine. there is nothing physically to separate in the frozen or semi-frozen product as no matter how it's done within the confines of home, the frozen substance will always contain a mixture of alcohol plus water. I'm afraid that this method is a misconception that has been circulating for years.

So what's next? Well another misconception for those with a home laboratory is that a bog standard setup of a cold water flowing in a Liebig condenser, round bottomed flask and conical collecting flask will work. What I'm talking about here is the standard apparatus used to distill water that most people learnt about during their teenage years at school. Again, this setup will distill off alcohol but it will be contaminated with small amounts of water from the wine along with other substances that give the wine taste.

(continued)

[theprof]

In a well equipped laboratory, there are many methods of doing the job. These include reverse osmosis, fractional crystallisation. and freeze distillation It would be unethical of me to provide details of the methods on a public forum. Besides, certain toxic alcohols such as methanol tend to end up in alcohol as well especially when fractionally crystallising whisky or brandy/cognac.

Finally, I would add that if you are in the USA and you are caught removing alcohol from wine, it will lead to an inevitable period of incarceration. Licences are required to perform this function and the licences are very strictly controlled. In the UK, the penalties are similar.

I strongly suggest you put the idea out of your mind.

[theprof]

MoonRocker, 60c for the alcohol to boil away? I'd politely suggest you do some further research on dilute ethanol boiling points and flash points. Don't forget to take into account atmospheric pressure.

[EDDIE51]

Prof, Hi nice to hear from you again. I am well versed in laboratory seperation methods but thought it too technical for this forum.
Many years ago I ran a very illegal but very effective reflux still in Saudi Arabia , it produced 140 proof ethanol, so pure it gave a single peak on GLC analysis.

[MoonRocker]

for christ sake prof, i didn't actually look up the boiling point but I know it's less thn water, I was just establishing the principle. ok it's 79 degrees, happy now?

[dave50]

Why would you want to? If you don't want to drink alcohol, drink something else.

[theprof]

I'm fascinated Moonrocker. Tell me, if you were only establishing a principle, why bother providing a temperature at all? If you wish to quote a temperature, be it an initial temperature or not, is it too much to ask that you provide the correct temperature is it?

Just think, you're 60c quote may have led to loads of home experimenters scratching their heads and wondering where they went wrong. Get it right - it says Science on the left not Speculation.

[sandyRoe]

Is brandy distilled from wine or grape juice?

[Duncer]

"Many years ago I ran a very illegal but very effective reflux still in Saudi Arabia"


Do I know you? Was I a customer.

[theprof]

Hi EDDIE51. To be honest, I only quoted the separation methods to show that there are ways of doing what the OP originally requested. Given that the cost of the equipment needed for my suggestions is prohibitive and that it needs the talents of an experienced chemist or technician, these methods are out of the league of any home experimenter.

I was working in the USA a few years back, when a company was set up offering to remove alcohol from wine by reverse osmosis. It turned out that the charge they made for the job was around one thousand percent of the cost of the wine and they would only do it in bulk quantities of an American barrel or more. Needless to say, they went bust after a few months.

Reflux stills take me back. I've known more than uni lab explode as a result of inexperience on the part of the distiller. I knocked up an unusual reflex still when I was lecturing in Organic Chemistry at a Northern UK university a good few years ago. The lab block was open over the Christmas period due to the installation of a CPC set-up along with the associated equipment. We had one of the best Christmas parties I've ever attended!

I'd have loved to have seen your still working EDDIE51. 140 proof consistently with a single peak on GLC is a great achievement. Well done!

[theprof]

sandyRoe, the answer is both. If I remember rightly, EEC regulations now require brandy to be made from 6 month aged wine or re-distilled wine or fortified wine.

However there are the so-called grape brandies which are produced from fermented grape distillation and these include Armagnac, Metaxa and all brands of Cognac.

I'm a bit of an aficionado of Hennessy Cognacs and looked into this a few years ago.

[EDDIE51]

My still had a reflux column filled with a mixture of glass marbles and broken glass we had to buy the marbles over a few weeks and tell the shop keeper we were planning a marbles tournament to explain why we needed so many. Many of the expats in Saudi were Yanks , they still know a thing or two about 'moonshine' in rural USA !