Vodka Questions and Answers
A chemist at The Washington Post answers a couple questions about vodka. And since he’s a professor emeritus, it’s quite likely that these are damn good answers. Besides, they’re really, really long.
The first question is whether vodka is useful as a cleaning agent. His answer in a nutshell? No. While vodka does have professed alternative uses, it’s just not as strong as other substances such as chlorine bleach. In fact, “even [100 proof] isn’t potent enough to do anything beyond making the germs happier.”
The next question concerns vodka’s purpose in pasta sauce: does it serve any? To summarize his answer, no. While there’s no study showing that it’s useless, he points to other studies that show that the taste of alcohol is barely discernible to the human tongue in the first place. Furthermore, “it does not…extract ‘alcohol-soluble flavor compounds’ that are not soluble in water”. That’s a good thing to know the next time you’re talking to a chemist and want to sound smart.
October 1st, 2006 at 3:56 am
It’s “No” all the way, you could have at least asked something like “Does votka in large amounts get people drunk?” to see if the guy knows how to say “yes”