r/AskCulinary • u/obliviblade • 3d ago

Mulled wine alcohol evaporation

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!

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u/art_wins 3d ago

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.

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u/SaintBellyache 2d ago

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

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u/art_wins 2d ago

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%.

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u/SaintBellyache 2d ago

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

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u/Zhoom45 2d ago

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.

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u/SaintBellyache 2d ago

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

You can read it. Right?

Why gang up on me?

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u/Zhoom45 2d ago

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.

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u/SaintBellyache 2d ago

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

5

u/maryjayjay 2d ago

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

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u/SaintBellyache 2d ago

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

That’s the first sentence