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From: ajd@itl.itd.umich.edu (AjD)
Date: 24 Nov 91 21:42:06 GMT
Newsgroups: rec.food.drink,alt.drugs
Subject: Everclear FAQ (preliminary)
[Sorry for the ghost posting that went out first.]
Everclear FAQ
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Where is Everclear
- Includes notes on other >150 proof grain alcohols, and on kinds of
Everclear available.
- Prices for Everclear
- Recipes
- Liqueurs
- Other uses
- The Chemistry and Dangers of Grain Alcohols
- Includes first-hand stories and information on Everclear and
lab-grade ethanol.
- Legal Problems
- Everclear Myths and Legends
- Miscellaneous
________________________________________________________________________
Introduction
It seems that a lot of people have a fondness for drinking paint
thinner.(:->) There was a good load of response to my question about
where to find that relatively notorious 190-proof drink, Everclear, and
although only a half of the states in the union are covered, it has
taken me a while to patch everything together. This list is definitely
open to additions.
My original question was where Everclear was available, and what
truth were there to the rumors of it being banned for import in some
states.
The question is mostly but not only academic. I've been wanting to
try my hand at making "electric jello" for years!
Some notes on the compiling of the list:
All material between and including "Recipes" and "Misc Notes" are direct
quotes from postings and mailings; any comments I have to make will be
in brackets [ ]. Some material has been edited to get to the point and
move on; several people have pieces of their paragraphs spread over
various sections to fit the categorization. I beg forgiveness for
misinterpretations due to my editing.
People who wish to have their names removed from attributions, or have
corrections to make in what they said, should e-mail me (AjD) directly.
Please be kind -- this is my first attempt at compiling something with
this volume of references.
Some notes on the first edition:
This is intended as a preliminary version of a more conclusive FAQ,
which will be updated as the legal status of Everclear and other very
strong (>150 proof) grain alcohols change. The final version of this
edition could use the following information:
- Documentation of legal implications of Everclear, and of banning
- Information about the distillery
- Citations about grain alcohol in medical and technical journals
- Filling out and clarifications of any information given below which
seems vague.
I forgot to ask whether people would like to receive credit for the
information they provide; Given the content of some entries, they may
not. For this posting, I have included the names of people as given in
the header of their messages. I will take no response to this posting to mean
that they would like to keep their name attached to their quote.
Other comments relevant to the issue or to my compiling are
welcome. e-mail to:
ajd@itl.itd.umich.edu
________________________________________________________________________
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Where is Everclear?
Everclear is available in the following states:
[Note: I speculate that various cities and counties within a given
state may not allow grain alcohol of that strength; this is based on the
fact that I couldn't find it when I lived in Erie, Pennsylvania.]
Arizona Colorado
Illinois Indiana
Kentucky Louisiana
Mississippi Nevada
New Jersey New York
North Carolina North Dakota
Oklahoma Pennsylvania
Texas Virginia
Washington DC Wisconsin (possibly)
Wyoming
The following places have grain alcohol of a high enough percentage to
be worth consideration here, but may not necessarily have the Everclear
brand.
Alabama New Hampshire
Ontario, Canada Quebec, Canada
Tijuana, Mexico
[Alcohols (specifically, rum and vodka) are available in proofs of up to
151 in most states, and so they were not considered in this survey;
states carrying Everclear 153 were retained, because they fit the
original parameters of the survey.]
Everclear is not available in the following states:
California Ohio
Minnesota Washington State (possibly)
Massachusetts (possibly)
The followings states have no results yet:
Alaska Arkansas
Connecticut Delaware
Florida Georgia
Hawaii Idaho
Iowa Kansas
Maine Maryland
Michigan Missouri
Montana Nebraska
New Mexico Oregon
Rhode Island South Carolina
South Dakota Tennessee
Utah Vermont
West Virginia
The "plain" Everclear comes in two strengths: 153 proof and 190 proof.,
the weaker apparently replacing the stronger in several states.
There are several fruit punches and coolers marketed with the name
"Everclear" on the label; the most widely known seems to be "Purple
Passion", which is a grape fruit drink. There is also a tropical-style
fruit punch. These have a strength of six to eight percent alcohol.
________________________________________________________________________
Prices for Everclear
Some people offered prices for Everclear where they live. The range
of reports are:
$10-$15 for 1/5 in New Orleans [=$12.50/l]
"About five dollars" per 375 ml in Arizona and Louisiana [=$13.33/l]
$11 for a fifth in Pennsylvania [=$13.75/l]
"about $16/liter" in Indiana
$12 for "a liter, I think" in Austin, TX
"about $14 a bottle" in New Jersey [either a fifth or liter]
Overall, no savings great enough to merit crossing several extra state
lines.
________________________________________________________________________
Recipes
I have found that about a five or six to one ratio of everclear to
water in your jello mix works the best. by this i mean it maximizes
alcohol content while still jelling in a reasonable time and at a
reasonable temp.
Have fun with this recipie.
Another use for everclear... is to make melon balls. slice a
watermellon in half. into each half pour a flask of everclear. allow
the melons to sit so that the everclear soaks in well. then eat the
melon, and suck the rinds. the rinds are especially good as they have
soaked up most of the everclear.
enjoy.
- alex chermside
It goes well with grape Kool-aid. Any proportion you want.
The recipe for making regular jello includes three ingredients:
1. Jello powder
2. Very hot water
3. Cold water
To make rum jello, substitute 80-proof rum for the cold water. If you
want to avoid the "rum" taste, you can use 50% everclear + 50% water
instead.
I have made rum jello, and the above recipe worked well. I have
tried using more alcohol with bad results.
- Kieth Lewis
Everclear can be used, with good results, as a substitute for Gin or
Vodka in almost any mixed drink. The problem with the Jello is that I
think there are problems with getting something to Gell with such a high
alcohol content.
- Fotis Xipolitakis
We tried a Black Russian, substituting Everclear for the vodka. I added
the Everclear to the glass, then the Kahlua, and the Kahlua curdled! It
was way too strong and I ended up adding milk and making a White Russian
out of it.
One successful recipe is to take a 16 oz. tumbler, pour in 2 shots
of Chambord (raspberry liquor), 1/2 to 1 shot of Everclear, and then add
ice and fill the glass with Classic Coke. You really can't taste the
Everclear, the raspberry flavor comes through, and it packs quite a
punch. We dubbed this drink the "Leg Spreader", since we figured that
women would like it more than men, and that you could get quite smashed
on it without realizing it.
I have made 'hairy buffalo' with it in college, which is a Hawaiian
Punch-based drink. Take oranges, marischino cherries, apples, limes,
and lemons, slice them (except for the cherries) and soak them in
Everclear overnight, or at least for a few hours. Pour the fruit and
Everclear into Hawaiian punch (you'll need to experiment with the
ratios, but you shouldn't be able to taste the Everclear too well). It's
really cool if you add dry ice to make it fog up. I don't recommend
this if you have light-colored furniture or carpeting, because
unfortunately the Hawaiian Punch does a great job of staining should it
be spilled.
- Sheila Wallace
I finally got some everclear for the first time last week and made a
halloween punch with it. Bit of a hodge podge: OJ, a can of Sprite,
pineapple juice, and everclear, plus a packet of Pat O'Briens cyclone
mix. Not bad, the guests liked it.
- Brian Bloom
...the world's cheapest Tequila+Everclear+the world's cheapest O.J. ==
BAD NEWS!!!
- Brian "Zamboni" Aslakson
My favorite method of serving the stuff was mixed with Kool-aid. I
had two ways of figuring out how much ethanol to add to 2 quarts of
Kool-aid:
1) Since it was 95%, I just rounded up and considered it pure
alcohol for the purpose of calculations. I would decide a percentage I
wanted to arrive at, usually between 5 and 15%. Say 10%. So: 2
quarts=64 oz. I COULD use algebra, to the effect of x = (64 + x)/10 ,
making x = 7.1. Fuck that--I would have just estimated, and guessed 7
oz. anyway. I would have taken a measuring cup and poured somewhere
between 3/4 and 1 cup ethanol into the 2 quarts of punch. I say would
have, because I forget what percentage I usually decided on, the few
times I've done this. This method is the one I would use at the
beginning of the party. More frequently, I would use method 2.
2) Make Kool-aid, add ethanol to taste. This is the method you use
after the first batch. Face it: you're going to have to sample your
work out of professional pride. And if you're like me, you're going to
realize that WOW--you can barely taste 10%. So you're going to add more
ethanol to that first batch, after you carefully figured out how much to
put in, and then you're going to taste it again. And you're going to do
this a couple of times, until either you get it perfect, or you
overshoot with the ethanol, and realize that you're going to have to add
more kool-aid or water or sugar (sugar helps if you overdid the
alcohol), and then you're going to have to taste it again. Etcetera.
And if you're stupid enough to tell you're guests about the true origin
of the alcohol, they're going to assume that you're an absolute idiot
who's trying to poison them with methanol, and to assuage their fears,
you're going to have to drink a lot of it before they'll even think of
touching it. (Hint: lie like a dog and tell your guests that it's
Everclear that your Uncle Bob bought in Kentucky.) For these reasons,
when I serve ethanol punch at a party, I'm usually the first one to cop
a major buzz. (And if it weren't for the LSD, I probably would have
completely passed out from it a couple of times :-)
The code word that I and my friends use for 95% ethanol from the
lab is "the Motts", not because of the commercial ("I've got the
Motts"), but because after one particularly good haul, I kept a half
gallon of ethanol in a 2-quart Motts apple juice jug.
Lab grade alcohol...there's nothing like it!
- Brian A. Bargmeyer
A couple of years ago, we bought a fifth of Clear Springs [another
grain alcohol] (we usually just call it 'PGA') and a 1.75 liter bottle
of vodka. We got a styrofoam cooler, tossed in about 8 packs of Kool-
Aid (Tropical Punch, I believe), a bunch of sugar, and filled it with a
garden hose. We then poured the PGA and vodka into the cooler along
with some various fruits. It turned out quite good...
- Keith Seymour
Let me tell you about this thing called Purple Passion. You buy it at
the liquor store in a 2-liter plastic bottle like soda. It is basically
carbonated grape juice and wine mixed with Everclear. The trace taste
of alcohol is so small that you can just sit there drinking it and
drinking it and get toasted in a big hurry. The label says it's 6.1%
alcohol, but I would bet that's a little downplayed. Maybe I just drink
so much I get wasted as though I were drinking whiskey, but the point is
that you drink this to get drunk.
The first swallows have kind of a bitter taste to me, but keep
going. If you really want to get wasted and you don't like that
piercing aftertaste that scotch and vodka have, this is the one.
- Shea
[At the given alcoholic percentage, a two-liter bottle has the alcoholic
strength of eight and a half cans of Budweisers and can be drunk "like
soda"; it is not to be "downplayed"! -- AjD]
I've heard of some recipes, but they're all for drinks; one involving
extracted THC ("green dragon"), and one involving 1 part everclear, 2
parts 151 rum, and 1 part some bright blue alcoholic drink whose name I
can't remember.
- Rachel
________________________________________________________________________
Liqueurs
I haven't been able to make a batch of homemade Kahlua since I moved to
California. And don't say "Oh, just use vodka": It's just not the same
- Arch Mott
The main reason for [not using vodka] is, depending on the proof of the
vodka, the proof of the final product after dilution with the sugar
syrup is between 40 and 50. If some 190 proof is substituted, the proof
can be brought up to that of a commercial liquor on any homemade liquor.
- Ted Feuerbach
- Find a glass container with an opening large enough to comfortable
accept a medium size orange. the small the container the better.
- Invert a glass shot glass and center in the bottom of the container.
- Pour a cup of Everclear into the container without wetting the shot
glass top. Place a fresh orange on top of the shot glass. The orange
should have a moderately thick skin, but not excessive.
- A ground glass top is ideal, if not, a closely fitting plate will do
to cover the brue.
- Check daily as the orange "sweats" its oils. It will slow after three
or four days (a week is OK but not necessary). DO NOT OPEN AT ANY TIME
till done.
- Remove orange and shot glass and pour in a cup of bar syrup. Theres no
majic here, find your own sweetness level, this is just for openners.
- Pour into a regular bottle and stopper tightly (after you've tasted
it, clear, crisp, intence, pure, WOW, no more of those orange liqueurs
again).
This stuff is fragile so plan on using it soon and don't make more
than you can use, one week is fine, after two it very drinkable but the
flavor is noticably less. And, it will get cloudy with no appearent
affect.
Yes any citris will work (never tried a grapefruit), we even put
two dozen mint leaves on a thread and hung over. The leaves turned
black and crumbly, but the tast -- sheer POWER.
To answer the obvious next question, no Vodka will NOT work.
- [attribution missing--please contact me (AjD)]
[in reply to the previous posting:]
Oh yes it will. I have done this exact same thing many times using
ordinary 80 and 100 proof vodka although admittedly it takes longer than
3 days. However, it also lasts a bit longer than a week!
Here's how I did it last weekend:
Into a 2 liter glass apothecary jar, pour a fifth of vodka. Using
a long needle and white cotton thread, run a thread through a medium-
sized orange. Suspend the orange over the vodka, wrapping the threads
around a brick or similar heavy object. Cover, do not disturb for 10
days. Remove the orange, mix corn syrup to taste. This stuff is potent
and the orange flavor is overwhelming, although it tends to diminish
after six months or so if you open it too frequently :-)
- Gary Benson
General Instructions for Herbal Cordials
[This can be modified to make Green Dragon as well as other (legal)
drinks; information has been gathered and summarized from the following
books: Cooking With Cannabis by Adam Gottlieb, The Herbalist by Joseph
E. and Clarence Meyer, and The Master Book of Herbalism by Paul Beyerl]
Basically, throw the herbs into a mason jar, fill with Everclear,
seal and let sit in a dark place for several weeks or months.
Generally, if you don't use heat to extract, it will need to sit for at
least two weeks. It is good to periodically swirl the jar around to
loosen the contents. You then have the option of storing the jar as-is,
and draining fluid to use as necessary, which will entail filtering on
every use, but the formula will progressively get stronger. Or you may
drain the stuff out, filtering through a cone-shape coffee filter into a
bottle for longer storage.
A more complex method is to dump all the herbal materials into a
jar, fill with alcohol, and let sit as above for a week. Loosen the top
of the jar and place in a hot bath; in which the water in a pot can boil
freely without splashing into the jar. Heat for 30-45 minutes. Remove
the jar and strain the alcohol into a second jar which has a fresh
collection of herbs; this process can be repeated up to four times but
for most people's purposes one repetition will be plenty. The final
step is heating the formula as above and filtering into an empty bottle.
I suspect, without experience, that one could improve the flavor of
some herbal cordials by adding a bit of corn sugar, but then, there are
elaborations and nuances to be had on all of the above steps. Any good
book on herbs and herbal lore will have further information. There are
also books specifically about making liqueurs and cordials, for those
interested in the subject.
- AjD
________________________________________________________________________
Other Uses
In 1985, I was working at Goddard Space Flight Center with a group that
used radio astronomy techniques (VLBI) to measure distances between the
observatories, and use this to measure continental plate motion. I was
sent to the observatory in Hat Creek, California to take some data.
The data is recorded on enormous tapes (not the standard 1/2-inch
computer tapes) with a special drive. Between each tape mount, the
drive must be cleaned with pure alcohol. That's right, Everclear. But
alas, the bottle was practically empty, so another flunkie and I drove
to Reno ( > 100 miles) to buy some.
The guy at the liquor store gave us a peculiar look when we asked
him to sign the offical government purchase form!
- Ilana Stern
...pure ethyl alcohol for extracting flavors from herbs & spices.
- Geoff Steckel
I personally use it to clean wounds, because it doesn't sting and it
kills infections. If I notice a cut getting inflamed, I splash it with
Everclear and it heals up just fine.
- Paula Goldman
________________________________________________________________________
The Chemistry and Dangers of Grain Alcohols
I had a little everclear left over so we did shots of it. I took an
everclear shot with no chaser. *Ouch* I can see why you have to be
careful near open flames with that stuff!
- Brian Bloom
I tried drinking it straight just once, after my wisdom teeth were
removed, and one socket felt inflamed. It was a very nasty experience.
All of the moisture in my mouth was evaporated at once, the fumes were
terrible, and my eyes attempted to leave my face. I've had 160 proof
rum straight before, and Everclear is much worse.
- Paula Goodman
I tried drinking straight Everclear twice (just one shot each time).
Both times I (later) came down with a sore throat followed by a cold. I
think it does something to the protective mucus coating on my throat.
This seldom happens with rum, vodka, or tequila.
Once in my freshman dorm, a guy came staggering down the hall toward
the men's room. He was barely able to stand up. A guy following him
told me that the guy had just chugged a pint of Everclear. He never
made it to the bathroom; he ended up leaning against the wall, whipping
it out, and pissing for 5 minutes (!) right there in the hall.
- Kieth Lewis
I once did a shot of straight 190-proof Everclear. The sensation was
like drinking liquid sand or something. The alcohol basically just
absorbed all of the water from my mucous membranes, leaving me with an
incredibly dry mouth. (This didn't last long, as I had a beer chaser
ready.)
I don't know that there is any significant difference between 190-
proof Everclear and lab-grade alcohol. Pure alcohol (200 proof) is
deliquescent -- it absorbs water from the atmosphere until it reaches
190 proof (95% pure).
- Steve Byers
I do recomend that you not drink it straight as it will burn your
throat and drinking very much of it straight can dissolve the mucus
membranes in your throat and do considerable damage (i have seen
someone go to the hospital after taking six shots of Everclear because
he was coughing up blood from his now-raw throat.)
- alex chermside
Distilled alcohol will have a taste to it because of the actyl (?)
aldehyde that will be produced with the alcohol. Can't remowve it by
distillation, and it's what give the alcohol the nasty taste. Everclear
is 95% alcohol by volume, not because by choice, but because you can't
distill pure (100%) alcohol. You wouldn't want to be drinking pure
alcohol anyways, since it contains trace amount of benzene in it (in
order to remove all the water).
- Stephen
Everclear is food grade 95% ethanol, and is quite widely available.
95% is the concentration that can be achieved with straight
distillation. That is the composition of the minimum-boiling azeotrope,
i.e. the mixture that has the lowest boiling point.
If you want to get it purer than that, you can get absolute alcohol
(200 proof American, which is different from Brit proof). That last 5%
of water is removed in one of two ways.
The easy way, used for industrial purposes, is to distil the water
out with benzene. The ternary mixture has a minimum-boiling azeotrope
which has substantially more water than the 5%. If memory serves, it has
about 17%, but I may be wildly off about that. I have not thought about
this in the last fifteen years and more. In any case, the water gets
distilled over rather quickly, leaving quite dry ethanol behind. Getting
it benzene-free is quite difficult. Benzene and ethanol have very
similar boiling points, within a degree Celsius or so of one another.
And benzene is very nasty stuff. You really don't want to drink any.
The other way to do this is to distil the alcohol from quicklime,
which reacts with water to form calcium hydroxide. If you want really,
really dry alcohol, it gets distilled, after that, from magnesium and
iodine. I suspect that would not be satisfactory from a food point of
view.
It takes at least some technical competence to make dry alcohol.
That is aside from the problem of whether you blow yourself up. Alcohol
is quite flammable.
High concentrations of alcohol will diffuse across mucous membranes
and disrupt cells by bursting them open. This is a common technique for
disrupting cells in the lab. I would expect everclear to do quite nasty
things to the throat and mouth, given any significant exposure.
At much lower levels, as low as about 30%, alcohol will precipitate
many proteins out of aqueous solutions. So expect to have jello "curdle"
on you if you get the concentration too high. Also, at those
concentrations many emulsions will get broken up. Expect cream liqueurs
to fall apart at not much higher.
Undenatured alcohol costs between two and three times as much as
denatured alcohol. The difference is due to the excise tax extracted by
the federal government. If you have a license from the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, you can buy it without paying the
premium. The tax gets waived. but they impose dramatic record-keeping
requirements on you. Enough to be a real pain. The idea, quite clearly,
is to keep people from drinking the stuff. Once the tax gets included,
everclear is about as expensive as cheap liquor.
I am pretty sure that pure ethanol has a taste and an odour of its
own. It would be pretty surprising if it did not. The odour is quite
different from that of acetaldehyde, the corresponding aldehyde, but I
cannot swear that the odour I associate with acetaldehyde is an accurate
guide to how acetaldehyde smells at very low levels.
The stuff I think of as pure alcohol has a faint sweet odour. Quite
pleasant, really.
- Shankar Bhattacharyya
Ah...lab grade EtOH! That clean refreshing drink!
My personal experience comes from snagging and drinking 95% EtOH
from a bio lab I was working at. The brand was Midwest Grain Products,
and on the bottle it said "95% ethanol, USP". Anyway, the stuff came in
1-gallon jugs in one of the labs (where we mixed it with distilled
water to 70% strength for cleaning and sterilization). The other lab
carried it in a five gallon carboy with a spigot for dispensing it. I
used it (officially) for killing fruit flies--it was a genetics lab,
and unwanted flies were tossed in a bottle of alcohol called "the
morgue".
Both labs had the same brand. Apparently, MGP is common stock in
biology labs.
Being a naturally curious lad, I asked my employer in one of the
labs exactly which alcohol I could drink and still see the light of day
the next week. Purely hypothetically, of course. He informed me that
the Midwest Grain Products 95% was fine to drink (sure there were trace
impurities, but nothing to hasten your death any more than the alcohol
would). He recommended against drinking the 100% ethanol, due to the
presence of benzene in amounts which might make one regret one's actions
later in life. However, the 100% ethanol wouldn't kill you
immediately, either. And he definitely recommended avoiding the
denatured alcohol, which in our lab was a mix of ethanol, methanol,
kerosene, and other delights. Somewhat less than tasty, I'm sure.
Note that the denatured stuff was a completely different brand from
MGP (exactly what, I'm not sure), and that the MGP bottles made no
mention of being denatured. I would THINK (I don't know) that companies
would be required to label the bottle accordingly if the alcohol was
denatured, and therefore capable of killing you on ingestion.
- Brian A. Bargmeyer
________________________________________________________________________
Legal Problems
When I was last in Reno (September, 1991), I bought a half gallon of
Everclear from discount liquor chain. I was only intending to get a
quart, but the retailer there said that when his current stock was
depleted, there would be no more. Ever. Never Ever. Never Ever any
more Everclear. :-) (sorry,...)
He mumbled something about a MADD campaign and national(?)
legislation passed, and that soon the only place you could buy Everclear
was some place in Tennessee (where it's made?), with a $10,000.00 fine
if you tried to smuggle it out of Tennessee.
- Douglas DeMers
There will be no more 190 proof Everclear in Nevada. The Everclear that
is sold in Nevada now is 153 proof. I assume this travesty has spread
to other states as well. Have y'all inspected your Everclear labels
carefully? :-)
- Brian B. Young
In Canada, we sometimes reffer to it as Alchool (pronounced alcool). It
is outlawed in Saskatchewan for sure and probably in Alberta and
Manitoba. It is generly not leagle were there is an abundance of grain.
It is a very potent grain alcohol. From my understanding the laws in
these parts of the country were designed to prevent home distilation
(moonshining).
- Fotis Xipolitakis
________________________________________________________________________
Everclear Myths and Legends
Oh good the fun part! How's this for legend: My friend's Mom claims
that she was at a party in her youth and one of the party-goers decided
to take a big gulp of PGA straight from the bottle. So he put the
bottle to his mouth and proceeded to chug it. He immediately passed out
& died. I dont know if that's true, but I certainly wouldn't try it.
- Keith Seymour
A friend of mine at UT Austin said that a friend of hers drank a very
SMALL amount straight and she threw up immediately. However at 95%
alcohol it's very toxic, and you can have exactly the same effects as
drinking 100% alcohol (which is not legal to sell, even to laboratories.
They detone laboratory ethanol with 5% acetate so that people wouldn't
try to drink it.). In other words, you can go blind, into a coma, die,
etc.
- Shea
[See the note by Shankar Bhattacharyya in "Chemistry and Dangers..."
above, for more accurate information on the content of lab-grade
alcohol. -- AjD]
________________________________________________________________________
Miscellaneous
Everclear also masquerades as grain alcohol in some states.
- Terri Huggett
Some places don't have it on the shelf. You have to ask for it.
- Joel A. Walberg
In Pennsylvania, they just started tracking the bottles with serial
numbers...
- Carl Robert Klemmer
...I had to sign a release form to purchase it [in Pennsylvania].
- The Mad Texan
I don't have the address, but it is marketed by World Wide Distilled
Products Company of Saint Louis, MO. Maybe you could ask them why they
are dropping the proof to 153 in some locales.
- Brian Young
It comes in a clear, very plain bottle, very generic looking. The label
doesn't really say a whole lot either. There is a picture of a
partially shucked ear of corn on it and there is some warning about
consumption being hazardus to your health and it says to keep it away
from open flame.
- Dave Reed
...there is something called diseal which is much cheaper (about $7-$10
for a liter) and is also 190 proof (so it should be the same stuff)...
- David Smith
[Where is this available? -- AjD]
...at the Ontario Liquor Board stores. It's not everclear, but they have
some distilled spirits that are 150 proof or more, so the effect is the
same.
- George Scott
When I was last down in Tijuana, Mexico, they sold liter bottles of
"Alcohol de Cana" (Alcohol distilled from Sugar Cane) for $2 (mid 80's).
This stuff was 192 proof. Nasty stuff. Half an ounce of it with a 12-
oz can of Coca-Cola, and you could really taste it.
- Bruce T. Hill
[in Alabama] We always bought 'Clear Springs' Grain Alcohol (basically
the same thing, it's 190 proof).
- Keith Seymour
I've seen 90% or 180 proof in Quebec...
- Fotis Xipolitakis
I don't know about distilling, but I know that 200 proof (100%) alcohol
did exist when I worked in a Oregon State Liquor Store in about 1970. It
wasn't kept on the shelves and there were very special regulations about
who could acquire it, but it did exist.
- Jerry Gaiser
"Everclear:
It's not just for breakfast anymore!"
- Brian B. Young
[I love it -- AjD]
________________________________________________________________________
Thanks to everybody who replied and clarified.
AjD ajd@itl.itd.umich.edu