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
A typical hot cup of coffee is served around 70C (160F) and that’s generally too hot for most people to do more than sip at until it’s cooled a bit. An extra hot cup might be served around 80C (180F or so), but that’s something that most people will leave in the cup while they drive to work, so that it’ll still be warm when they get there – though I guess some people might like to sip scalding hot coffee.
Point being, most coffee is served just around the boiling point of alcohol, or maybe slightly higher. But if you’re adding room temperature Baileys to a hot drink, you’re cooling it off a bit, so the overall temperature of your boozy coffee is likely going to end up a shade south of that boiling point, leaving it warm, but with the alcohol intact. Certainly a bit of the alcohol might burn off while it’s cooling down from that temperature, but you’d need to continue adding heat (like boiling it on a stovetop) to actually burn off all of the alcohol.
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