[Avodah] Selling bourbon before pesach

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 04:57:10AM +0000, kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
: Can someone direct me to a simple explanation of how these drinks
: are made? For example, do the grains merely soak in water until the
: water has absorbed their flavor? If so, then this would not really be
: chometz gamur, but more of a "kavush k'mevushal" status. Or are the
: grains actually dissolved into the water?

A mash is made of grain and water. This is then consumed by yeast, which
converts the carbs in the grain to alcohol and carbon dioxide. In sparking
wine and bear, that CO2 is kept in, which is why they have bubbles.

This is called fermenting (in this context, fermenting tea is a totally
different thing); but if you want to avoid alcohol, start thinking
of it as giving it to a fungus to digest.

The yeast can be consciously added, or you can wait for enough airborn
yeast to collect. See my previous post about beer (added) and whisky/ey
(airborn).

The yeast die when the mixture reaches around 12% alcohol. That's why
standard wines are at about that level. With good environment control,
you can inch that up a bit, so you may see 13% or even 16% wine.

To get a high alcohol drink one needs to distill the liquid. This means
bringing it to some temperature above 70 deg C, so that alcohol will
boil, but below 100 deg C, so that water does not. The vapor will lack
the water and therefore be more alcoholic than the original. It is then
is cooled and collected.

Beer is so similar to bread, that Scientific American once carried an
article theorizing that bread originated as a failed attempt to make
beer; perhaps during a water shortage. Something crudely like beer can
occur naturally, when grain gets wet and the mixture ages enough to get
the local animals tipsy. So, the theory suggested that beer was refined
off that discovery, and bread an accident off that side-line.

To be more balanced, the question of which came first, and thus why
Qayin's descendents bothered going into farming, is still open. It's not
impossible that we owe cities and civilization to beer. But if not, to
bread.

Either way, all this shows how related beer and whisky/ey are to
leavened dough.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             For a mitzvah is a lamp,
micha at aishdas.org        And the Torah, its light.
http://www.aishdas.org                   - based on Mishlei 6:2
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