About an hour and some ago I was tidying up the kitchen and I decided to toss an almost empty vodka bottle. Since it still had a little bit in it, I poured it into a jigger thinking I could make myself a drink later. I left the kitchen for a while, and on coming back noticed that It looks like about an eighth of it (it was just under the jigger line) is gone!
Unless I’ve got a sneaky cockroach imbibing on my tab, it has to have evaporated. Could it (80 proof) really have lost that much volume to evaporation that quickly?
A jigger is an ounce and a half. Elapsed time was about an hour and twenty minutes. Temperature was ~75º F. Humidity unknown, but it’s been a rainy weekend and this is Houston, Texas.
Ironically, I checked Houston’s humidity at approximately the same time this happened yesterday. Honest. Just happened to be comparing our’s with that at some relatives.
Yes, it can evaporate that fast. Especially if it happened to be in a warmer-than-normal spot (in a sunny spot, for instance.) While Houston was humid, you might have air conditioning, and this lowers the humidity indoors - also creates a draft that increases evaporation.
But don’t discount the cat theory either!
btw, it wasn’t the water that was evaporating (and therefore humidity is irrelevant), but the alcohol itself. Alcohol has a boiling point around 80 degrees and evaporates very quickly (note what happens to rubbing alcohol). Leaving out vodka like that will leave you with water. Since an 1/8 was gone, i’d say that the proof had gone down to 20% (40 proof).
