I read a news article about TGI Friday restaurants in NJ getting caught adulterating high end liquors on the bar, it said during testing one ended up being isopropyl alcohol with caramel color.
I opened up a bottle of pure 90% iso I had handy and the smell almost blows you over, compared to something like vodka or everclear it is nasty.
Is this plausible?
*In case you are wondering small amounts of isopropyl alcohol are not toxic in the sense of causing blindness or organ damage. So I guess customers could have been drinking it, but man!
Most alcohol served at one of those restaurant chains (TGIFridays and the like) is served in mixed drinks, rather than neat.
90% alcohol is 180 proof, which is very “high octane” for an alcoholic beverage. Probably most mixed alcohols are closer to 40% (or less with some of the fruity liqueurs).
The “caramel coloring” is unspecified. Easiest to get would probably be some of the syrup for the soda dispenser. You could use something sweet at a low concentration, probably a cola or Dr Pepper would be a good choice, to provide both color and a little sweetness/flavor.
For the sake of completeness, though - I have 70% isopropyl alcohol pads at home (the kind used to clean off skin before doing a finger stick in hospitals, etc.), so I touched one to the end of my tongue in a few places. It might have been different if I’d prepared myself a drink with some diluted isopropyl (please don’t try this at home), but the flavor was nothing worth noting. There were some slightly more chemical “zings” of taste in it, but really it just wasn’t that notable.
(And then I gargled with mouthwash, because that weirds me out even at low concentrations.)
If the bar has one of the $100 vodka or Whiskey bottles (for show) they could extend the life of that bottle by adding, say, 25% of an iso/water mix; since drinks are typically up to 100-proof, you would mix 180-proof iso with water to get 100-proof - add something to colour so this stuff still looked the same colour when diluted. The sucker would drink a quarter of his alcohol as isopropyl. If that’s too much, 10% would still save the bar some money. Considering the markup, that’ a lot of money.
However, I’m surprised someone at the bar would be so cheap and risky. There’s plenty of money to be made by charging premium prices for top-end whiskey or vodka by the shot, but diluting the content with the much cheaper stuff. Less risky, and almost impossible to tell unless the person is a gourmet drunk or the commerce department inspectors do a complex chemical test.
(I recall an item in the news about 20 years ago where the Ontario Liquor Control Commission was chemically testing bottles to determine if restaurants were pouring cheaper untaxed US liquor into their high-taxed Canadian bottles.)
wikipedia says as litle as 15grams can have toxic effects on a 70 kg human.
I’d have to point out that isopropyl alcohol smells different from regular alcohol, and surely patrons would say “my drink tastes kinda weird”. Also its viscosity is different, it’s more oily
I’d also point out that medical isopropyl alcohol, which is pretty much the only kind you get (I don’t think Home Depot sells it in the large metal canisters in the paint aisle as a sovent/paint thinner) is probably more expensive than edible grain alcohols or cheap boozes, amount of alcohol vs. amount of alcohol. Medical stuff is always sterilized and highly pure, which is expensive. A little bottle of 70% isopropyl is like $15, a large bottle of everclear is what, like $17 with tax included? And everclear is 95% alcohol
doesn’t seem realistic
Sounds like they’re trying to be more sensationalistic with the rubbing alcohol claim. Anybody could do a test and find rubbing alcohol in booze, or in anything else; modern tests for traces of material they can detect anything in anything. If your water contains 1 part per trillion of benzene, does it “have benzene in it”?
I was trying to price isopropyl vs cheap vodka. I saw prices of $3 for 16 oz 99% isopropyl alcohol online. A 750ml bottle of 80 proff vodka is about 10 oz of alcohol. I think that isopropyl alcohol is cheaper by about 50% vs ethanol.
You can by a 5th of vodka (25 ounces and about 40% alcohol) for about 5 dollars. So by volume, they are about the same price. (But if going by alcohol content methanol wins).
I strongly suspect the TGIF bus boys. Underaged and stupid.
You’re weird. I just downed 5 mL of 70% isopropyl mixed with 10mL Coke and it was fucking horrible. I can see how TGI Fridays got caught. Tastes just how you think it will.
Isopropyl alcohol, or “rubbing alcohol” is comparable in toxicity to ethanol (which is toxic enough, but it’s not like a small sip’s going to kill you).
However, ethanol is oxidized to acetaldehyde and then acetic acid in the body, which is easily metabolized. Isopropanol is oxidized to acetone, which while not particularly toxic, is not well metabolized. It can make the breath smell “fruity”.
Methanol, or “wood alcohol”, is metabolized to formaldehyde and then formic acid, which is toxic (it is well known to first go after the optic nerve, causing blindness). However, methanol isn’t as toxic as many people think: it is a common minor constituent of alcoholic beverages, and I think consuming up to something like 2 mL per day is considered safe.
If methanol is a small part of a drink containing ethanol, then you should be fine. Ethanol is essentially an antidote, preventing the breakdown of the methanol. The body then simply excretes unmetabolized methanol through the urine with no acidosis.
As for price, my local dollar store carries isopropyl alcohol. It’s seriously cheap stuff. And in many states pure ethanol like Everclear is illegal. I would suspect that someone who was too young to buy alcohol had been imbibing, then adulterating to cover their tracks. Otherwise it would just make way too much sense to re-fill with cheap vodka.
The only other thing I can think of is someone with a chip on their shoulder about “Rich folks” who drink the top liquors. I could maybe see someone like that pouring in the isopropyl just for the joy of watching them drink it up and pretend to like the high dollar scotch. I had an Uncle who was weird that way, and always trying to replace my good coffee with supermarket stuff to “fool” me. I drank it quietly in an attempt to be polite, (we were at my Grandmother’s house) which resulted in an outpouring of joy and gloating from him. I never really understood it, but it made him so happy I just let it go. So I can see this being the same twisted mindset.
That’s exactly what bI’m thinkin. Great story about your grandfather so typical. I’m also thinkin it could be like a minus man thing. I just made a video on my YouTube about this, I am not certain but I feel I have tasted isopropyl on 4 separate occasions in Europe. Twice recently at bars when drinking Tequila shots (I have a pretty familiar familiarity with this drink and own several mid/high end bottles Herradura, Don Julio, Señor) and these tequilas I drank at bars tasted more like iso propyl that nasty clean alcohol like synthetic stuff as compared to ethanol pure and fruity. Then recently bought a bottle of Siera Antigua Añejo and was disappointed to taste that isopropyl in there too. Like a bad mash with something ill inside it. Covered up by some aromatic caramels which I liked immediately when I opened it, like a bottle of caramel corn. This bottle claimed to be 100% agave but I tend to doubt it, or at least that it may have been bottled in Germany by schisters or minus men of some sort.
There is a story in my family that in the 1930s an uncle (as a very sick child of about 12) drank pure alcohol and died. It was in a glass on his bedside table (probably to put a thermometer in) and he thought it was water. I’ve wondered about that, thinking the smell would have given it away, but maybe he was so sick and congested that he didn’t notice.
Alcohol in this country is highly taxed; about 75% of what you pay is tax. Added to that, most pubs are ‘tied’ to a brewery who charge them inflated prices. The landlord in the pub I worked in used to buy cheap whiskey and gin from a supermarket and re-bottle it. Punters never knew any different and the landlord pocketed the difference. He got caught because the brewery saw that consumption was going down and made the logical deduction. Adding water or anything else was risky, but I bet some landlords did it, and some will be doing it now.
Very common in laboratories which have stores of industrial alcohol. They typically have stores of both ethanol and methanol for scientific purposes. Sneaking ethanol and drinking it is pretty safe, but inevitably someone who doesn’t realize the distinction between methanol and ethanol tries this and gets the wrong kind with horrific results.
I grew up in a small village where a large laboratory was the main employer, and personally knew one person who was blind because of this kind of mistake.
The brewery own the pub, and the landlord has to get all booze (not just beer) through them. It would literally be cheaper for the landlord to buy retail priced liquor at the corner store next door than from the brewery. They can also hike up the rent at will (and as they know exactly how much booze they are selling they, they know when they can jack up the rent)
One of the worst offenders is Greene King who own a massive percentage of pubs in the South East England. The pub in my home town (which is now the onlt surviving pub of many) constantly changes landlords because of this.
