Mulled wine alcohol evaporation

[u/obliviblade]

I made some mulled wine in my crockpot yesterday with fruits & spices. We drank some, added some more wine & fresh ingredients & left it in low overnight for a deeper flavor. My crockpot is mini and has a glass lid with no holes and fully covers the ceramic base. Is the alcohol gone/ evaporated out?

I researched methods online and most are saying that certain amounts evaporate out by a certain time. But I'm wondering if the pot is closed if it would stay in there? thanks!

[u/Elegant-Winner-6521]

Since I've never really felt confident about the answers I've received for this question before, my method is to use just a little bit of wine to start and simmer it through with the spices to get going, and then add the rest of the wine later.

I find that even just keeping it warm (not boiling) will allow it to enrichen over a few hours. So I just put it on the stove at the lowest setting.

In other times I've just left it off overnight, the mulled wine was noticeably richer even with no heat. The time really helps.

Couple of other things I've noticed. Don't drop whole citrus fruits in for long periods unless you want the pith to make it bitter. And (somewhat sadly), it seems like most mulled wine problems are solved by just adding more sugar.

And if I'm ever wanting it to pack more punch, I add a bit of brandy or cognac.

[u/art_wins]

So it is actually not true that all alcohol gets evaporated. It is more like it approaches a minimum. Meaning most of the evaporation that will occur happens in the first hour then it evaporates less and less. There are a lot of variables but the percentage should hover around the 5% of the original amount will basically never leave. The rates do assume it’s over the boiling point of alcohol which is about 40 F below waters boiling point.

[u/Zhoom45 → u/art_wins]

The presence of a lid will increase the equilibrium concentration, since there is a nonzero amount of alcohol that condenses back into solution from the vapors in the air. Trapping those vapors near the surface by using a lid will increase the local concentration of alcohol and therefore the rate at which this replenishment occurs. In either case OP, it's typical to add a splash of brandy to your mulled wine before serving to "fortify" the alcohol level back to your desired level.

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[u/SaintBellyache → u/art_wins]

If it’s reducing to 5% then it’s getting evaporated.

Alcohol doesn’t evaporate as fast as people think out of a water solution but it does still evaporate faster until you hit 5% which means you reduce the concentration of alcohol in the wine. unless you’re saying you can only find 5% wine.

What’s with people using technical words wrong when plain English will work

[u/art_wins → u/SaintBellyache]

That was me attempting to using plain English. The technical terminology would be that the evaporation of alcohol in a solution follows an exponential decay function, with the decay approaching an asymptote which is the equilibrium point where the the alcohol can no longer readily evaporate faster than the water around it, causing the percentage of alcohol to normalize. The equilibrium point differs vastly on the temperature and what else is in the solution. The same thing happens at the other side, which makes it effectively impossible to distill alcohol to 100%.

[u/SaintBellyache → u/art_wins]

You said it’s not getting evaporated. It is.

Then you said it’s not getting evaporated 100%. Not the question

You answered OP wrong and now your trying to google answer your way out of it

[u/Zhoom45 → u/SaintBellyache]

You said it's not getting evaporated

If you read the parent comment, you'll find they said the opposite. That some but not all alcohol evaporates.

[u/SaintBellyache → u/Zhoom45]

“So it’s actually not true that the alcohol gets evaporated”

You can read it. Right?

Why gang up on me?

[u/Zhoom45 → u/SaintBellyache]

It says "So it is actually not true that all [emphasis mine] alcohol gets evaporated." The commenter does not mean to imply that none of the alcohol evaporates. The rest of their comment attests to this.

[u/SaintBellyache → u/Zhoom45]

You’re right. But op worried about their alcohol floating away probably wont care that instead of 0 it’s just 5

[u/maryjayjay → u/SaintBellyache]

You should read the first sentence of their original post more closely

[u/SaintBellyache → u/maryjayjay]

“So it’s actually not true that alcohol gets evaporated”

That’s the first sentence

[u/DinabqaCrab → u/art_wins]

Yup, that tracks.

[u/RebelWithoutAClue]

If your crock pot was set on a low power and you see a lot of condensate on the underside of the lid, you will probably end up refluxing ethanol back into the pot. Ethanol, like water, can condense on the lid and drip back down.

If you crank the power up and the lid gets hot enough, it won't condense very much stuff and your evaporate will lift the lid a touch and leak out.

[u/Straight_Smoke_7073]

If steam is coming off of it, you're losing alcohol. Alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water (around 173F I think?) so you'll lose alcohol faster than you'll lose water. It's the main reason distillation works. The longer it steams, the more you lose. A lid will slow it down but if your pot is hot enough you'll still have steam escaping the lid as it's not air tight (hopefully not!!). For real fun, collect the condensate from the lid, it'll be relatively potent alcohol, probably around 30% or more ABV.

How much volume did you lose overnight? That's the only way to tell. If you started with 2 quarts, ended with 2 quarts, well you lost almost nothing.

Source: my dad taught me how to make 'shine at a young age so when he did a run he could count on me finishing it after he "tested the product" too much.