Palcohol approved by TTB

[Michael Gunderloy]

http://www.palcohol.com/

This means powdered alcohol can legally be sold in the USA…if they can manage to ship it before the states all outlaw it.

Previous discussion: http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=90180

[Ken Thompson]

States will use the film "Lover Come Back" as evidence. VIP, lol

[Ethan A.]

I was just about to post this and of course someone at BPL would have had to already…

I can see a whole lot of bug juice at schools getting spiked.

[Jerry Adams]

Does it weigh less that 95% alcohol?

per unit of alcohol as consumed?

[James Marco]

They can approve it all they want. I don't think it is very efficient to carry 4-6oz to get one drink, not counting water. More of a gimmick. The same weight of EverClear would be about 5/8oz not counting the bottle you carry it in.

[Charlie W]

This came up on another forum. Since I'm at least peripherally a chemist I was interested enough to try to figure out what the heck. No deep research here just Wiki and some commonsense. Also, I should note that I learned about cask-strength here at BPL. Re-posting myself below:

First off, you can't make ethanol lighter than it is. You can already get Everclear at 95% abv (92% ethanol by weight) depending on what state you are in. Or a regular whisky at 40% or "cask-strength" at 60%ish. So, can they beat that?

It's not dehydrated ethanol. Powdered alcohol involves absorption of ethanol into some other chemical, almost certainly cyclodextrin in this case, thereby making it into a powder form. Wiki says that cyclodextrin can absorb 60% of it's weight in ethanol, so the resulting powder would be (at best) 38% alcohol and 62% cyclodextrin by weight. Cyclodextrin is a pretty weird molecule but you are probably eating it already if you are on a low-[insert bad thing] diet. For example, it can be used to sequester cholesterol (and god knows what else) from your food. It's not really one thing but rather a class of artificial molecules all made of a ring of glucose monomers. You can make a lot of different things depending on the arrangement and steriochemistry of glucose monomers; e.g., in nature you have cellulose, starch and glycogen. At least some forms of cyclodextrin are used as a kind of dietary fiber.

So if you make a cocktail that is 15% ethanol then it will be 24% by weight cyclodextrin. For reference, a coke is about 12% sugar by weight. What I don't know is whether cyclodextrin itself tastes sweet, or even if it has caloric value. The answer probably depends on the the exact form. All of Palcohol's mixers are sweet, and I'm guessing (but not sure) that the sweet is from the cyclodextrin itself. But it could be from addition of more normal sugars or artificial sweeteners. (Or both.) Calories listed per "bag" is only 80, which is quite a bit less than a coke (and I think could be accounted for by ethanol alone). It's possible that no one knows the caloric value of the particular cyclodextrin used and the number listed in the FAQ is derived from known substances only (as I believe would be the case in the official nutritional info label). I didn't do a search on the taste of this stuff, but did see a passing reference to "sorority house drink".

In summary: if you are an ultralighter trying to optimize ethanol / ounce carried, this stuff is OK but not great. You can equal it with a regular whiskey and do better with cask-strength. It may or may not have some additional caloric value. Taste is of course subjective.

[James Marco]

OK. So you are saying it is roughly 1/3 alcohol, 2/3 *another chemical probably cyclodextrin by weight.

Everclear is roughly 92% alcohol by weight.
Regular whiskey is roughly 80 proof alcohol (yes it varies.)
So you would need about 2 2/5 packets to make one 12oz drink
Or you would need about 2 2/5oz of whiskey to make one 12oz drink
Or you would need about 1oz of Everclear and a packet of flavoring to make one 12oz drink. (You should always dilute Everclear before drinking it.)
Or you would need 2 2/5 cans of beer.

[Michael Gunderloy]

But on the plus side…

…less chance of spilling in your pack than Everclear.

…fiber is good for you!

(As someone working on the periphery of the liquor industry, I'm fairly sure this company will find it enormously difficult to get any wide distribution, no matter what the merits of the product. And as a backpacker, it's not going to end up in my pack. But it's still amusing to talk about.)

[Charlie W]

My bad: their label indicates 55% abw, which would indicate that the chemical (cyclodextrin or whatever) is able to absorb a bit more than 100% of its weight in ethanol. I'm not sure whether to believe that or the Wiki: "cyclodextrins can absorb an estimated 60 percent of their own weight in alcohol." The reference for that is only a newspaper article and I haven't tried to track it beyond that. You could postulate that Palcohol developed (on their own) a new and better chemical AND somehow got FDA to say it's safe AND somehow kept this compound a secret from the internets, but I think that's improbable. By the way, it's regulated by Treasury rather than FDA which is why you can't see the chemical on the label. I hope that Treasury would at least require that the ingredients be approved as "generally safe" by FDA, as is the case for cyclodextrin. This makes me wonder if the 55% abw was verified by a banker rather than a chemist. (That was a joke. In fact, it was unlikely verified by anyone.)

In any case, if you believe their spec and mix water to 10% abv (as indicated by the label), then you are still eating almost 10% carrier chemical. That might be appealing to those of you that drink diet coke and already like synthetic sugars or sugar-like compounds.

Edit: I just noticed how close 55% and 60% are. It's very possible a newspaper reporter got confused between abw and the amount of ethanol cyclodextrin can absorb (as a percentage of cyclodextrin weight), and then the error got propagated to Wiki. So for now I'll give benefit of doubt to Palcohol for the alcohol content.

[Charlie W]

More follow-up. Since some BPL posters are rather literal, I should maybe address the technical aspect of whether this is really "dried-" or "dehydrated alcohol". Well, that hinges on the word alcohol. If you accept that "alcohol" is referring to a mix of water and ethanol, then cyclodextrins (or something like them) really could remove water from your mix. That's because ethanol will preferentially occupy the doughnut hole in the middle of the cyclodextrin ring over water. I've searched for chemistry references indicating the stoichiometry of this occupation, but so far in vain.

I did find an interesting article on using it as a delivery system for phenobarbital in suppositories. Apparently, phenobarbital sequestered in β-cyclodextrin dissolves very quickly in the assholes of rabbits. HOWEVER, the phenobarbital itself may remain partially sequestered, and the net effect on absorption of drug into the rabbit is unclear. I'm going way out on a limb here, but I wonder if it is possible that the stuff could continue to sequester ethanol in your stomach, thereby reducing (or at least delaying) its beneficial effects…?

Just to be clear, this is pure speculation on my part.

[Bob Gross]

Exactly what are you doing to the poor rabbit?

–B.G.–

[Charlie W]

I didn't do anything to the rabbit. I'm just reporting scientific literature to educate BPL readers.

[Charlie W]

In all fairness you should watch video by founder:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYP085QJvtk

What I learned:

1. Snorting it is very painful.
2. It would take "about one hour" to snort that much of the fluffy white powder anyway.
3. Don't use it as a date-rape drug in iced drinks because it dissolves way too slowly.
4. It has some interesting industrial applications.
5. If we all drank it instead of beer, wine, whiskey, etc., we could reduce greenhouse gas emission from alcohol shipping by 2/3.

[Edited for clarity and to add more items. I have to respectfully disagree with post below calling it "smoke, mirrors, and marketing." I would call it instead a work of unintentional brilliance.]

[Greg Mihalik]

"3. It reduces green house gas emission by 2/3 compared to shipping regular alcohol."

But then you have to add back the incoming shipment of the powder, its footprint, and the footprint of its packaging.

Maybe a draw. Definitely smoke, mirrors, and marketing.

[Dale Wambaugh]

Aye, Laddie, there are legions of old Scots turning in their graves. An abomination to the whole purpose of having a wee dram as the sun sets :)

[Charlie W]

So I've been watching YouTube videos (sorry all, I just can't let this go…) and there are three groups that buy into the "powdered alcohol" with no skepticism whatsoever: Fox News, "youth news" (or whatever you call producers of videos like "Can you butt-chug powdered alcohol?"), and politicians of both parties. It's a strange mix. But they all very clearly believe that the white powder is actually, in honest to god fact, a concentrated form of ethanol ("freeze dried", "crystallized", etc.). No incredulity. No questions. No curiosity. Nada.

BPL members are obviously smarter. Or maybe it is just their obsession with weight.

Edit: my apologies to Fox News. CBS and every other news report I've watched (mostly local news) also buy into the idea of concentrated ethanol. The founder is trying to have it both ways: lighter for outdoor enthusiasts yet at the same time too heavy and bulky to provide any advantage for sneaking into a theater (an idea promoted on his original website before being taken down). News reporters don't see a contradiction there. No one is bothering to ask a chemist. Haven't seen any CNN coverage yet.

Some smart 20-yr old is going to figure out that snorting and butt-chugging doesn't do much, but if you blow the fluffy white powder in the air and light it……..

[d k]

"Exactly what are you doing to the poor rabbit?"

Thank you for the laugh, that made my night!

[Ralph Wood]

So, dare I even ask… Butt-chugging?

Might this be something else that those poor rabbits and 20 yr olds have in common?

[jscott]

Through my psychic abilities I'm able to forsee a large uptick in snake bites on the hands and arms of young male backpackers. Also, "hey, watch this!" reported as the last words spoken by members of this same demographic.

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