I have recently added alcoholic Baileys/vodka to hot chocolate and coffee. The boiling point of ethanol is 70C, does the alcohol boil off?
In: Chemistry
Liquids also evaporate at temperatures below their boiling point. The hotter they are, the faster they evaporate. So while it’s true that ethanol has a lower boiling point than water, even if you raise the temperature of the liquid above the boiling point of ethanol, it’s not just the ethanol that’s going to evaporate. Both water and ethanol will evaporate, just at different rates. The longer you keep the liquid at this temperature, the weaker the ethanol concentration becomes (because you’re losing ethanol faster than water), but also the less liquid will be left in total.
To boil off most of the alcohol you’d have to keep it at a high temperature for a long time. Stirring Baileys (or other types of booze) into a hot drink will not lead to much alcohol loss because the drink won’t be that hot to begin with (probably just around 70C), will cool down by the addition of the Baileys, and will cool down further as time passes.
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