[Avodah] Selling whiskey/bourbon

[Zev Sero]

Simon Montagu wrote:

>>     But whiskey is *not* a taaroves, it's chametz itself.

> 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.

Taaroves means less than half.  In this case the minority of water is
batel to the majority of chametz, not the other way around.  Now vodka,
on the other hand, and other clear spirits, is a different story; they're
usually distilled to 96% purity and then watered down to 40%, so the
chametz would indeed seem to be in a taaroves.

Of course a taaroves chametz which is edible is still assur.

-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                     - Margaret Thatcher