The colder a liquid is, the less taste you perceive. Hence, cheap mass market beer tastes better ice cold because you can’t taste the off flavors. In high end vodka, a lot of effort goes into filtering out the impurities to give the product as little taste as possible. (save for added flavorings) By serving it very cold, you reduce the amount of taste, making it taste “better”.
Interestingly, I heard a caller on NPR claim that he put cheap vodka through a Brita filter 3-4 times and ended up with a product that could be mistaken for a top-chelf vodka.
Not only the problems of frostbite, hypothermia and EtOH being a vasodilator, but more important yet is alcohol’s powerful action as a dehydrator. You would have to drink up all your fresh water supply in a very short time just to stave off dehydration–and then what, eating snow? Anyone who engages in physical exertion on the order of backpacking at -20 to -30F and drinks alcohol while doing so is being foolish on so many levels it’s hard to list them all.
I’ve wondered something about finding the freezing point of a solution from the molarity since I had to do it in chemistry. When calculating for a solution that can be mixed in all ratios (I can’t remember the name for such a solution), there must be a point at which the equation is no longer valid. For example, I just calculated for 95% ethanol and 5% water and the freezing point came out to something below absolute zero. What’s the deal?
