Wanna make powdered alcohol in your kitchen? The recipe is quite simple.
1. Weigh out 100 grams of N-Zorbit into a mixing bowl. Because the powder is so fluffy and light, this will be a sizeable mound.
2. While whisking steadily, drizzle in 30 grams of high-proof spirit. I use Lemon Hart 151-proof rum. After you’ve stirred it in completely, the powder should be dry, but somewhat chunky. If it’s still moist, sprinkle in a little more N-Zorbit.
3. Sift the dry liquor through a fine sieve to break up the chunks and make a nice powder. If you’re making a larger batch, you can do it in a blender and step 3 won’t be necessary.
Voila! You’ve got powdered booze. You can stir it into water or another mixer to taste, to make a delicious sippable; sprinkle it on food (rum powder is great on desserts); or just lick a little bit of powder off your finger for the novelty. Be careful: it’s highly flammable! Don’t get it anywhere near a flame.
Got that? Not that I have any use for powdered alcohol, which probably tastes awful and seems pointless (unless the goal is to defeat searches for booze or other similar reasons which are not especially relevant to me).
What piqued my curiosity about this was reading about the federal government’s apparent claim that powdered alcohol is illegal.
What’s the basis for their position? Except possibly in California, here are no laws prohibiting powdered alcohol, yet the FDA bureaucracy seems to think that anything it hasn’t specifically approved is illegal.
Sounds to me like the un-American notion that everything is forbidden, except that which is specifically permitted by law.
Comments
4 responses to “Since when is it illegal to add booze to starch?”
It’s not illegal “to add booze to starch”.
It is illegal under 27 USC 205(e) to sell alcohol unless “he [the producer or seller] has obtained and has in his possession a certificate of label approval covering the distilled spirits, wine, or malt beverages, issued by the Secretary in such manner and form as he shall by regulations prescribe“.
This is not “illegal because not explicitly permitted”, but “explicitly illegal”, and for once the Commerce Clause seems to allow it.
(From the link you gave, The company that makes Palcohol — Tempe, Ariz.-based Lipsmark LLC — said that “there seemed to be a discrepancy [about] how much powder” is in the packets, which are meant to be mixed with water.
Lipsmark said that it will resubmit the product for approval.
It appears that the revocation of the label, required for sale, was based on it being inaccurate as to the contents.
If the TTB said “we’ll never approve a powdered alcohol”, that’d be another matter, and one I’d want to see statutory basis for. But they haven’t said that yet.)
Anyone else having flashbacks of VIP from the Day-Hudson movie, “Lover Come Back?”
Doctor Linus Tyler: “At last, I’ve given the world what it needs! A good 10-cent drunk!”
And of course, what torpedoed the alcohol lozenge was the established booze companies. At least in the movie they had the grace to buy the inventor out instead of waiting for the government to shut it down. Well, it is fiction, after all.
Not saying the FDA hasn’t overstepped their bounds in other areas, but this particular argument was settled at about the time of the Whiskey Rebellion. FedGov gets their skim off the alcohol trade.
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