As you may have read, I got a chemistry set for Christmas. Not really interested in making blue crystals from Copper Sulphate and wanting to do something that worked pretty much immediately we had a bit of a brain storm. With all these tools at our disposal, and lots of alcohol lying around, what did we do? We set out to make stronger vodka.

Admittedly this was done at Christmas, but I've been waiting an age for the Science Gimp to give me the photos.

So here have it: a traditional chemistry set with lots of stinky bottles, some test-tubes, petri dishes, and a mini bunsen burner. Joy!


Here was our method (to our madness), we poured an amount of vodka into a test-tube, which was bunged at the top with a thin glass tube leading into a second, empty test-tube. This second test-tube was itself inside a glass of water to aid condensation.

Like all good scientists we needed a benchmark, so I volunteered. Yummy, lovely vodka, hmmmm.


Then we set off by lighting this little bunsen. It had some lighter fluid in a small jar with the wick poking through the lid, basic but it did the job. Fire...heh heh...FIRE!


Then we poured the vodka into the test-tube (more difficult than it looks, especially when you've just swigged half a bottle of vodka).


Helping me keep my shaky drunken hands steady, Raf (resident science gimp and as far as my insurance is concerned, my adult supervision) and I line up the test-tube over the bunsen.


The excitement, coupled with my drunken state, got a bit much for me. Raf took over much of the holding during the experiment.


As you can see, there was quite a lot of soot build-up. Hmmm, maybe lighterfluid wasn't the best thing to use.

 

 

 

BANG! Explosion! What the hell happened? Vodka everywhere...

...face covered in mess. after a bit of examining we realised that the bung we had been using was not open the whole way through. The water had been turning into steam, and with nowhere to go the pressure built up until the bung popped out spilling vodka everywhere, including on the bunsen.


So we started again.


After a while the water in the vodka turned to steam, travelled along the glass pipe into the second test-tube, before sucessfully turning back into water again. Thus supposedly leaving us with pure vodka. I say "supposedly" because we are not actually scientists, and undoubtedly we screwed up somewhere along the line. Regardless, we were left with this potent looking, murky liquid.


Well, this uber-vodka wasn't going to do anything by anyone simply watching it, so there was nothing left for it...


BLEURGH! This thing was nasty! What had we created?! It was super, super strong. So strong in fact, that when I lifted it to my face to drink it my eyes started watering.


In conclusion, with a couple of test-tubes, and quite a bit of time, you can make vodka stronger, much, much stronger. Unfortunately, this took a long time to do for very little result. The amount of uber vodka produced was less than a shot. I would suggest in order to get drunk from vodka simply drink more, and then some more, don't bother with this.

So there we go, science at work.

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