Percentage of Ethanol in Alcoholic Beverages

Nathaniel J Zhu
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, George Mason University Received: February 2, 2014: In Final Form: February 4, 2014 Keywords: Whiskey alcohol concentration, ethanol in alcoholic drinks, nyan cat, alcoholic drinks, ethanol,
ABSTRACT: While many alcoholic beverages have alcohol percentage labels, many do not and others use different standards such as the proof. There is a physical method of determining the alcohol content of beverages by plotting a standard graph of %ethanol by volume and mass. This allows any alcoholic beverage consisting of primarily ethanol and water to be quickly analyzed of alcohol concentration. This standard is useful for analyzing unknown concentrations of alcohol quickly. The relationship between the density of the solution is negatively and linearly proportional to percentage of ethanol in solution. An beverage with an unknown volume of ethanol is determined by analyzing the standard graph. Whiskey with a mass of 4.71 g has a density of 0.942 g/ml and a volume of 5ml.

Introduction Alcoholic drinks contain a wide range of alcohol composition. Alcohol content may be as low as 2% or as high as 99% but at a certain concentration, it becomes difficult for many to differentiate what "too much alcohol" is (Phi, 2013). In addition to being inaccurate at estimating alcohol consumption, the National Alcoholic Beverage Control Association called the labeling of alcoholic beverages, "The Blurring of Alcohol Categories" (Phi, 2014). Indeed, alcoholic drink companies do not need to label the alcohol content of beer and wine. That results in a problem. How can the amount of alcohol consumption be known? Figure 0: Alcohol percentage varies significantly between different brands of alcoholic beverages

amount of carbon dioxide released during fermentation with the amount of alcohol produced since biosynthetic pathways typically yield a specific average of ethanol produced per quantity of carbon dioxide released in the alcoholic fermentation pathway that is so important in the study of biochemistry (Drunk Man, 2014). Without knowing how companies produce their alcohol, this method along with many other isn't a reasonable method of determining alcohol concentration. In this experiment, the primary method of determining alcohol concentration is by plotting a standard graph of % alcohol vs. density of known values so that an unknown value can be traced along the standard and be identified. Experimental I. Preparation of alcoholic solutions

1. Obtain a 50ml graduated cylinder and a 100 ml beaker. Obtain 30 ml of ethanol and using a graduated cylinder, transfer it to a beaker. Next, add 70 ml of water in order to produce a solution that is 30% ethanol by volume. 2. Obtain another 100ml beaker. Obtain 45 ml of ethanol using a graduated cylinder and transfer the contents to a beaker. Next, add 60 ml of water to the beaker in order to produce a solution that is 45% ethanol by volume.
The primary goal of this experiment is to determine the alcohol percentage of a drink without any complicated tools or methods. Some methods of measuring alcohol content involves brewing the alcohol and correlating the

3. Repeat the previous step to produce solutions with %ethanol by volume of 50%, 60%, 75%, 85%, and

90%. The total volume is 100 ml so subtract the percent of ethanol from 100 to obtain the volume of water to add to the beaker.
II. Mass of Alcohol

Figure 1: The relationship between density and alcohol percentage is linear

1. Obtain the mass of an empty 50 ml beaker 2. After obtaining, all seven beakers containing 30%, 45%, 50%, 60%, 75%, 85%, and 95% ethanol by volume respectively, take a 5 ml aliquot of the beaker containing the 30% ethanol and transfer the contents to the 50 ml beaker. 3. Mass the beaker on a digital scale and obtain the weight of the solution by subtracting the weight of the empty beaker from the weight of the beaker containing solution 4. Record the weight 5. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each of the alcohol percentages
III. Analyze Data

Density vs %Ethanol
1 0.95 Density 0.9 0.85 0.8 0.75 0 20 40 %Ethanol 60 80 100 y = -0.0022x + 1.016

1. Construct a table of 5% alcohol and mass of each of the aliquots 2. Calculate the density of the solution 3. Plot the graph of %ethanol vs. Density Results and Discussion Table 1: Mass and density of ethanol/water solutions. %ethanol by volume(+/0.5%): 30 45 50 60 75 85 90

A source of error could be in the tools used. In this experiment, a graduated cylinder was used to measure the volume of water and ethanol however a better choice would be the buret which has a lower error. Table 2: Calculated percentage of ethanol in whiskey vs. the actual percentage of alcohol in whiskey Mass of Whiskey (g) (unknown Alcohol Volume percentage) (ml) Density %Ethanol 4.71 5 0.942 37 Theoretical % = 40% The calculated percentage of alcohol is 37% where as the theoretical percentage is 40%. This means the calculated method is great for estimating the amount of alcohol in an unknown beverage. All it takes is the mass of 50 ml of the beverage and the standard graph. Error Analysis: LINEST (Density:%Ethanol) LINEST OUTPUT: m s R^2 -0.002198665 1.015988471 b 0.000303532 0.019862532 s 0.912997902 0.01646602 s

mass (g) (+/- 0.001): Density 4.7505 0.9501 4.47 4.581 4.505 4.28 4.191 4 0.894 0.9162 0.901 0.856 0.8382 0.8

Error Propagation Sample: error by volume = +/- 0.5% error by mass = +/- 0.001% y (+/- .001) = -0.002x (+/- 0.5%) + 1.016 y = density = 0.942 +/- 0.001 x = 5% ethanol = ? Since there are no addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of errors, no error propagation is available. Conclusion Calculating the percent of ethanol in an unknown solution has been simplified by this approach. In this experiment, density was determined from mass and a repeated 50 ml aliquot. Density was then plotted against %volume to produce a graph with a formula that was used to calculate the ethanol percent of whisky just by using the mass of the whisky as a 5 ml aliquot and was successful in estimating the actual ethanol percentage. Potential improvements would be to use a buret rather than a graduated cylinder for volume measurement because of the lower error. In addition, less ethanol could be used. In the experiment, base the total volume on 20 ml rather than 100 ml so that there is less waste of ethanol. Footnotes:
Displayed equations .

ASSOCIATED CONTENT
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
Nathaniel Zhu nzhu@gmu.edu 7573562682

Present Addresses
5129 Meowmeow Drive, 22060, VA Beach, VA

Author Contributions
The manuscript was written through contributions of all authors.

Funding Sources National Science Foundation George Mason University Fluffy the cat

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We thank George Mason University, Goku, and the National Science Foundation for funding.

ABBREVIATIONS REFERENCES
Phi. How Much Alcohol is in Your Drink. http://www.phi.org/news-events/553/how-much-alcohol-is-inyour-drink-stronger-beers-and-wines-make-it-harder-to-tell (accessed Feb 2, 2014) Drunk Man. Measuring Alcohol Content of Your Beer. http://drunkmansguide.wordpress.com/2007/12/19/homebrewin g-%E2%80%93-measuring-alcohol-content-of-your-beer/ (accessed Feb 3, 2014)