Useful caloric density of a good booze

[Charlie W]

OK, I don't really need this justification. So go ahead and shoot me down or enable me, as you prefer. I'm trying to get a handle on usable caloric density of a good tasting booze. By that I don't mean Everclear but, say, a decent whisky at 40% ethanol.

I found an old NYT article (citing real research that I did not read) talking about why alcoholics consuming 2000 kcal of ethanol / day actually loose rather than gain weight. That kind of consumption interferes with normal catabolism and basically tasks your metabolism with cleaning up the fallout. I didn't immediately find anything on utilization of more modest amounts of ethanol. Maybe there is real research on this?

In any case, wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_energy) has energy density of ethanol at 6.9 kcal/g. That would put my whisky at 2.76 kcal/g (counting only ethanol) which is essentially the same value provided by nutritional labels: 76 kcal/28g = 2.71 kcal/g.

Well, that's not as good as peanut butter (5.9 kcal/g) but it's right in there with strawberry jam (2.8 kcal/g)!

[Adrian Swanson]

If you upgrade to some barrel proof bourbon (~65% ABV) you're in SUL territory (>125 kCal / oz). I like it neat, but you can add a spoon of water to tone it down.

[David Thomas]

A standard drink – 12 ounces of beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine, a shot of distilled liquor – is right around 150 calories. The exceptions would be in some mixed drinks with sugar syrup, concentrated fruit juices, etc. Or anything that is over-sized or over-strong like some of the large ales of high alcohol content will be over 150 calories.

[Charlie W]

Excellent suggestion! I have not tried barrel proof / cask strength before, but I see there are whiskeys too. Are these any good? I guess if I need to cut it some fine Sierra water will do the trick.

Looks good on my food/nutrition spreadsheet anyway. At 65% ABV that brings it to 4.5 kcal/g, which is almost the same value as a Snickers bar.

[James Cahill]

And of course, if you go that high with ABV, you can always use a tiny bit to help get a fire goin. Not that I would ever want to light a good drink on fire, but if I really had to…

[Author]

Posts