[Avodah] Selling whiskey/bourbon

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 7:14am EY time, R Ben Waxman wrote:
: What Rav Rappaport found was that today, the first thing the manufacturers
: do is to boil the wheat/barley. Only after this step do they begin the
: traditional process described below...

Guides to whisky and whiskey don't mention this. They discuss making the
mash (which would halachically be dough, even though the pieces of grain
aren't flour-sized) and fermenting it.

But in any case, noodles are also boiled and they're chameitz gamur,
no? I'm missing the piece why this would make a difference.

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 2:42am Pacific ("besof maarav"?) time, R Simon
Montagu wrote:
: Does adding water to liquid chametz make it a taaroves?  Scotch whisky has
: water added when it's bottled.
: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch_whisky#Bottling says that cask strength
: is 50%-60% alcohol while bottled whisky is normally 40%-46%. If my math is
: right, that would mean that anything between 8% and 33% of the bottle would
: be water.

Im kein ein ladavar sof: Those two are done years apart. But what if they
were minutes apart? Simple solution to making peas for Ashkenazim. Put
up the peas, and some point during cooking, add more water.

There has to be something wrong with this. I presume it's because adding
water to a mixture that contains water, even 12 years later, does /not/
make a taaroves. But that's merely guesswork on my part.

I just moderated for a moment, and approved RZS's post (the one right
above this one) even though it didn't reach me as email yet.

FWIW, I don't know where we say that taaroves implies mi'ut. Bitul berov
assumes a taaroves in which the issur is a mi'ut. Are we saying here
bitul berov, or taaroves in general?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Life is complex.
micha at aishdas.org                Decisions are complex.
http://www.aishdas.org               The Torah is complex.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                                - R' Binyamin Hecht