Something you never knew that you needed - powdered alcohol

[Loren Pechtel]

Thunderf00t did a good analysis of it. Pretty much there's no advantage to it - they are essentially just absorbing alcohol onto a powdered matrix - you might as well just carry the liquid version of it.

Unless you're trying to get on an airplane.

 

[dismal]

And fooling people who are bad at science into thinking they are lugging less weight.

Or maybe those who are informed when it comes to backpacking know that backpackers often do not carry all the water they are going to use on the trail and filter their water as they need more. They would also know that the many of them also carry dehydrated food to lighten the load they have to carry.

http://www.rei.com/c/water-treatmen...45|pkw|+water++purifiers|pmt|b|google|main|NB

http://www.rei.com/c/freeze-dried-f...4245|pkw|dehydrated+food|pmt|p|google|main|NB

Hmm, you seem to have completely missed the point.

You don't need to carry all the water to get the ethanol up a mountain anyway. You can carry *drumroll* ethanol. Grain alcohol. Everclear. Ethanol.

Now here comes the science quiz:

What weighs more

A) One pound of ethanol
B) One pound of ethanol soaked into one pound of dextrin powder
C) In Science 101 this would be obvious but if you take advanced Science you would learn it's impossible to know.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Or maybe those who are informed when it comes to backpacking know that backpackers often do not carry all the water they are going to use on the trail and filter their water as they need more. They would also know that the many of them also carry dehydrated food to lighten the load they have to carry.

http://www.rei.com/c/water-treatmen...45|pkw|+water++purifiers|pmt|b|google|main|NB

http://www.rei.com/c/freeze-dried-f...4245|pkw|dehydrated+food|pmt|p|google|main|NB

Hmm, you seem to have completely missed the point.

You don't need to carry all the water to get the ethanol up a mountain anyway. You can carry *drumroll* ethanol. Grain alcohol. Everclear. Ethanol.

So rather than carry an ounce of powdered rum or vodka per drink you carry a glass bottle of Grain alcohol?

 

[dismal]

Hmm, you seem to have completely missed the point.

You don't need to carry all the water to get the ethanol up a mountain anyway. You can carry *drumroll* ethanol. Grain alcohol. Everclear. Ethanol.

So rather than carry an ounce of powdered rum or vodka per drink you carry a glass bottle of Grain alcohol?

Trying again...

There is no "powdered rum".

This "powdered alcohol" is liquid ethanol soaked into a solid.

If you want to get some amount of liquid ethanol to the top of the mountain it would be lighter to carry the ethanol without the solid it has been soaked into.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

What flavors are there? We plan on releasing five versions sold in a pouch that is the equivalent to one shot of alcohol:

V which is powder made from premium vodka distilled four times.
R which is powder made from premium Puerto Rican rum

 

[Keith&Co.]

You can't ingest the powder comfortably, it turns into a hard to swallow gel when it hits the moisture in the mouth.

Yay! A beverage for Alzheimer's patients, who develop difficulty swallowing!
They're likely to aspirate stuff that isn't thick and syrupy....

Now they can partake in a night out with the, um, the boys? Telling tales that may have happened to someone else....

 

[Mageth]

Hmm, you seem to have completely missed the point.

You don't need to carry all the water to get the ethanol up a mountain anyway. You can carry *drumroll* ethanol. Grain alcohol. Everclear. Ethanol.

So rather than carry an ounce of powdered rum or vodka per drink you carry a glass bottle of Grain alcohol?

Plastic bottle. Preferring whisky, I carry a 750 ml water bottle of e.g. Knob Creek. Drink or empty out the water, pour in the liquor. Carry more or less of your preferred alcoholic beverage by preference, use other non-glass containers as to your preference. As for the bit of extra weight (what, about 400-500 ml of water?), who gives a fuck? It's worth it!

For pure awesomeness, mix the bourbon with a little "branch water".

With Everclear, you can get a lot more "bang for your buck", or "bang for your ml", if that's what your after. And it doubles as stove fuel!

 

[Axulus]

Hmm, you seem to have completely missed the point.

You don't need to carry all the water to get the ethanol up a mountain anyway. You can carry *drumroll* ethanol. Grain alcohol. Everclear. Ethanol.

So rather than carry an ounce of powdered rum or vodka per drink you carry a glass bottle of Grain alcohol?

Why would it need to be in a glass bottle? Plastic is lighter and breaks less easily. Just pour it into a Nalgene or something.

 

[dismal]

What flavors are there? We plan on releasing five versions sold in a pouch that is the equivalent to one shot of alcohol:

V which is powder made from premium vodka distilled four times.
R which is powder made from premium Puerto Rican rum

When it comes to weight I think these would all apply.

Ethanol + solid > ethanol
Rum + solid > rum
Vodka + solid > vodka

I suppose if you were planning on carrying a bag of dextrin to put in your drinks anyway it would be a push.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

So rather than carry an ounce of powdered rum or vodka per drink you carry a glass bottle of Grain alcohol?

Plastic bottle. Preferring whisky, I carry a 750 ml water bottle of e.g. Knob Creek. Drink or empty out the water, pour in the liquor. Carry more or less of your preferred alcoholic beverage by preference, use other non-glass containers as to your preference. As for the bit of extra weight (what, about 400-500 ml of water?), who gives a fuck? It's worth it!

For pure awesomeness, mix the bourbon with a little "branch water".

With Everclear, you can get a lot more "bang for your buck", or "bang for your ml", if that's what your after. And it doubles as stove fuel!

I'm not sure I can get Everclear in my state and I don't drink on the trail as I age my hangovers get worse. I am heading out to the AT in a couple of weeks going to pass Knob Creek Distillery. Have you ever been?

 

[Mageth]

Plastic bottle. Preferring whisky, I carry a 750 ml water bottle of e.g. Knob Creek. Drink or empty out the water, pour in the liquor. Carry more or less of your preferred alcoholic beverage by preference, use other non-glass containers as to your preference. As for the bit of extra weight (what, about 400-500 ml of water?), who gives a fuck? It's worth it!

For pure awesomeness, mix the bourbon with a little "branch water".

With Everclear, you can get a lot more "bang for your buck", or "bang for your ml", if that's what your after. And it doubles as stove fuel!

I'm not sure I can get Everclear in my state and I don't drink on the trail as I age my hangovers get worse. I am heading out to the AT in a couple of weeks going to pass Knob Creek Distillery. Have you ever been?

Never been to the distillery, but I've contributed to the upkeep!

I saved a hiking/fishing trip in the GSM (Abrams Creek) one April from becoming a disaster...after slogging 10 miles over hill and dale in the rain to reach a campsite that looked quite close on the #@$%# map we had, breaking out the Knob Creek and cooking up a couple of steaks (yes, we packed in steaks for the first meal), things started looking a lot brighter! (Rained the whole 4 days we were there! Unfortunately, the Knob Creek didn't last that long...)

 

[Horatio Parker]

Here in NY, it used to be a beautiful thing to enhance a long uptown subway ride with a can of Sapporo. Now it's a $50 ticket...

Powdered alcohol would be handy.

 

[bilby]

Thunderf00t did a good analysis of it. Pretty much there's no advantage to it - they are essentially just absorbing alcohol onto a powdered matrix - you might as well just carry the liquid version of it.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c0QLaVLhTs[/youtube]

Adsorbing.

It's a good word, and rarely gets out. Misrepresenting the process as 'absorbing' is just cruel.

 

[SimpleDon]

Say's law is a law about aggregates, not individual products.

And if this product has no value to anyone I'm sure no one will want it and there is no problem to see here.

Yes, you are right, it is on aggregate. I was making a little economics joke here. Many people seem to believe that the supply of product creates demand for the product.

 

[SimpleDon]

What kind of a bluegrass venue bans alcohol. They go together so well.

Up here in mid-Michigan we have a place called Salt River Acres. My wife, brother-in-law and I help the owners out taking tickets, providing security, etc., in exchange for free camping and going to the shows. The venue owner goes down to Alabama every winter and brings back huge quantities of moonshine. The 'shine flows quite a bit. The owner even has slurpee machines and make moonshine slurpees.

Nothing better than bluegrass and moonshine.

A bluegrass venue in God's country I guess. It was the Everett's family farm and home. They had a bluegrass group made up of family members who would rehearse in their home and barn. People would come to listen to them rehearse and it grew from there. Since it was someone's home and they didn't want alcohol there no one minded.

 

[SimpleDon]

It seems they are not actually making powdered ethanol but absorbing liquid ethanol into a solid (dextrin of some sort) that maintains powder like properties and dissolves in water.

http://www.google.com/patents/US3795747

So I imagine it would have a) more weight per ethanol amount than grain alcohol and b1) still be flammable; b2) still be inflammable. But probably not much use in stoves.

The "stoves" I was thinking about are simple, homemade, very light weight alcohol stoves, essentially just burners. E.g., the cat can stove, easily made from a Fancy Feast tin (see video below). Can also be made from beer (e.g., Heineken) cans. Lots of different designs and information about these on the Web. I'm guessing that the powder would work in such a stove with a little tweaking, but whether it would put out enough heat to be useful is the question. It would be an interesting (and fun) experiment. However, probably not very practical; Everclear works great, and I can't see this stuff doing anywhere near as well. (But that's just an hypothesis without experimental results!)

I was never very fond of alcohol stoves. Alcohol has only about 60% of the caloric (heat) value of gasoline. The stoves aren't pressurized which is a problem at altitude and they not controlled, you can't control the amount of heat coming out of them.

 

[ZiprHead]

A bluegrass venue in God's country I guess. It was the Everett's family farm and home. They had a bluegrass group made up of family members who would rehearse in their home and barn. People would come to listen to them rehearse and it grew from there. Since it was someone's home and they didn't want alcohol there no one minded.

Ah, I see.

At the Salt River Acres venue, many of the bands stay in the campground. You can walk from campsite to campsite and hear bluegrass music being played all night long. But you respect the campsite holder's rules.

It really is a beautiful thing though to sit around a campfire with stars of the bluegrass music industry playing music all night long.

 

[Mageth]

I was never very fond of alcohol stoves. Alcohol has only about 60% of the caloric (heat) value of gasoline. The stoves aren't pressurized which is a problem at altitude and they not controlled, you can't control the amount of heat coming out of them.

Yes, those are the typical objections. However, their simplicity has its advantages. For one, if your stove breaks while you're way past the end of the road, you can make one from trash you find lying around. Try doing that with a "pressurized, controlled" stove. Also, they're cheap. And fuel is very easy to find and generally cheap. And if you're careful about the alcohol you buy, the fuel is drinkable!

And they're just so much fun to play around with! There are all sorts of plans online...or you can play with your own designs.

For example, if you want pressurized...

Basic Pressure Jet Alcohol Stove

DIY Pressurized Alcohol Stove