What does ‘dry’ mean in alcohol

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I’ve never understood what dry gin (Gordon’s), dry vermouth, or extra dry beer (Toohey’s) etc means..
Seems very counter-intuitive to me.

In: Chemistry

14 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Fully dry (“brut”) means the yeast have converted all available sugar to alcohol, leaving little/no residual sugar. A brut beer still has some residual sugar, and this is because yeast can’t eat maltose (malt sugar). In contrast, the sugar in fruit alcohol (cider, wine, champagne, etc) is fully digestible to the yeast, so a brut wine will have no residual sugar.

*EDIT – other redditors have made right what I got wrong in the comments below. Here’s a fresh take at the point I was attempting to make: It is a challenge to produce a fully dry maltose-based alcohol (e.g. beer) because the yeast will naturally cease activity before all sugar is consumed. Conversely, it is a challenge to produce a sweet or semi-sweet fructose-based alcohol (e.g. cider) because the yeast will generally be active until all sugar is consumed.

Anonymous 0 Comments

In a very simplified way it refers to how sweet or, in this case, not sweet a drink is. A dry drink is not going to have much sugary (or fruity – another term used) taste in the mouth.

So a fruity drink is sweet while a dry drink is not sweet to the taste.

Anonymous 0 Comments

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Anonymous 0 Comments

As the other commenter said, it’s essentially the opposite of sweet. Dryness refers to how much of the sugar has been converted to alcohol. The drier it is, the less sugar left after the fermentation.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Wow, this was a rabbit hole – but I did some research.

First, the meaning is pretty easy (and covered) – dry alcohol means not sweet. (London Dry Gin is a different story I’m not going into). So, if you see a wine or beer or alcohol listed as dry, there is usually a sweeter counterpart.

But, why “dry” to describe “not sweet.” The best answer I’ve been able to find is that we can trace the term centuries back – to the extent you need to look at french text from the 1200s for the first recorded references to “vin sec” (dry wine). When terms are that old, you usually loose the etymology – so all that is left is our best guesses.

One very good thought is that wine used to not be aged the way it is now. We lost the art of tightly sealing jars (perfected by Greeks and Romans) in the dark ages, so if you let wine age too long it would go bad. Aging is one way we can breakdown the chemicals that make a wine astringent. If you drink a very astringent wine, you will notice your mouth feels dry. Sweet wines (wines with more sugars in them) mask the astringency and would not have a dry mouth feel. As different ways of making wines and alcohols evolved in the ensuing centuries, we were able to make not-sweet alcohols that don’t have this effect, but the term “dry” stuck.

For more extensive reading with lots of links: [http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=709617](http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=709617)

Anonymous 0 Comments

In terms of actual chemistry, dry ethanol is ethanol with very little water. As both molecules are polar, they mix very readily. Removing water from ethanol can be done via distillation, followed by adding Magnesium Sulfate. It may be needed to dry ethanol if left open for a while when you need a pure ethanol solvent. This is not the same term as ‘dry’ when referring to an alcoholic beverage however – I believe in that context it refers to the flavour of the beverage.

Anonymous 0 Comments

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