A relatively simple way to test whether you actually like the taste of alcohol specifically: take a reasonable quantity of your favorite alcoholic beverage, beer/wine/mixed drink/whatever, and split it into two containers. Close one, and heat the other slightly to evaporate off most of the actual ethanol. Then just do a blind taste test. This does still require not lying to yourself about which you prefer, but it removes most of the other things that make knowing whether you like the taste hard.
I personally don’t care enough to try this, but just the habit of thinking “how could I test this?” is good.
I don’t know for sure either way, and can’t think of an experimental way to check off hand. I don’t think that heating is likely to do anything to the other components of most drinks, and you might be able to make a better guess with domain knowledge I don’t have.
I think ethanol will generally evaporate more quickly than water, so you might also be able to get a similar test by simply closing one portion into a container with only a little air, and leaving another open for a long enough time, overnight maybe. will still lose some water, which is I guess a more real problem with heating as well.
shrug, the details weren’t really the point, just wanted to emphasize the idea of thinking of ways to test whatever you’re interested in physically instead of just reasoning about it.
AFAIK, it will utterly destroy many of the volatile components of wine that make it taste so complex and interesting.
That’s why alcohol-free wine tends to be so bland and uninteresting.
I’d be willing to do a taste-test on alcohol-free wine vs wine that I already know that I like… If you hide the non-alcoholic one in sufficient number of normal ones I probably wouldn’t guess which one it was (I’m not good enough at telling which wine is which that I’d spot a particular wine by taste, just whether I like them or not).
A relatively simple way to test whether you actually like the taste of alcohol specifically: take a reasonable quantity of your favorite alcoholic beverage, beer/wine/mixed drink/whatever, and split it into two containers. Close one, and heat the other slightly to evaporate off most of the actual ethanol. Then just do a blind taste test. This does still require not lying to yourself about which you prefer, but it removes most of the other things that make knowing whether you like the taste hard.
I personally don’t care enough to try this, but just the habit of thinking “how could I test this?” is good.
How do I know that the heating doesn’t evaporate or otherwise affect stuff other than ethanol?
I don’t know for sure either way, and can’t think of an experimental way to check off hand. I don’t think that heating is likely to do anything to the other components of most drinks, and you might be able to make a better guess with domain knowledge I don’t have.
I think ethanol will generally evaporate more quickly than water, so you might also be able to get a similar test by simply closing one portion into a container with only a little air, and leaving another open for a long enough time, overnight maybe. will still lose some water, which is I guess a more real problem with heating as well.
shrug, the details weren’t really the point, just wanted to emphasize the idea of thinking of ways to test whatever you’re interested in physically instead of just reasoning about it.
AFAIK, it will utterly destroy many of the volatile components of wine that make it taste so complex and interesting. That’s why alcohol-free wine tends to be so bland and uninteresting.
I’d be willing to do a taste-test on alcohol-free wine vs wine that I already know that I like… If you hide the non-alcoholic one in sufficient number of normal ones I probably wouldn’t guess which one it was (I’m not good enough at telling which wine is which that I’d spot a particular wine by taste, just whether I like them or not).
Maybe you could try adding a little more ethanol to one of the two glasses.