Souped-up spirits offer tipples for the hangover prone and impatient

Vodka takes a cue from sports drinks

Hangovers from alcohol overconsumption have been part of the human experience for the entirety of recorded history. We nonetheless have a limited understanding of the biochemistry behind the morning-after blues and rely mostly on folk remedies to cope with them.

One treatment that seems to help is to drink electrolytes. A pharmacy in Europe might hand you betaine citrate or an effervescent, buffered potassium chloride–sodium chloride tablet. In the US, it’s more likely to be a sports drink loaded up with sodium and potassium citrates, chlorides, and phosphates.

Billy Fanshawe hit on an alternative while he was a college student at Towson University. If electrolyte depletion is part of the problem, why not drink the electrolytes alongside the alcohol? Over the next few years, Fanshawe went from mixing cocktails with the children’s electrolyte blend Pedialyte to launching his own brand of electrolyte-infused liquor, Lytos Vodka.

The R&D process wasn’t all parties. Fanshawe says he evaluated a huge range of formulations looking for the neutral taste vodka is known for and an alkaline pH. He also had to watch out for side effects of some electrolytes. Magnesium, for example, can loosen bowels; not something you want during a night on the town, he says.

Dissolving all of those salts into 40% ethanol is also hard, Fanshawe says, and the techniques for getting everything into solution are an important part of the company’s intellectual property. The US Patent Office issued Lytos a patent on the product and process in February.

Getting both patent coverage and approval from the state and federal agencies that regulate alcohol had Lytos walking an interesting tightrope. To qualify for a patent, it’s not enough to concoct or invent something: you have to demonstrate it has a use. And the clear motivation for Lytos is reducing hangovers and other ill effects of alcohol consumption. But on the marketing front, they’re forbidden from making anything that could be construed as a medical claim.

Binge drinking is dangerous, and the short-term woes it can bring also involve acetaldehyde buildup, neurotransmitter depletion, and regrettable late-night text messages. Electrolytes likely can help mitigate some level of overconsumption, and customers have left some glowing reviews along those lines. The official endorsement from Newscripts, though, is still thoughtful moderation.

Quicker liquor

Technically speaking, the liquors that brewery engineer Tobias Jensen and food chemist Aleksander Byzdra make can’t be called whiskey in all the parts of the world where they’re being sold. Terms like whiskey, bourbon, rye, and scotch carry rules about the duration, materials, techniques, and even geography of aging.

The pair’s start-up, EtOH Spirits, replicates all of that magic using a custom-built reactor inside a shipping container parked behind a science incubator in Copenhagen, Denmark. The system is tricked out with chemical engineering kit such as ultrasonication, partial-batch flow chambers, and precise controls for pressure, temperature, and oxygenation. The results are spirits with flavor profiles, aromas, and mouthfeels ready in days or hours that would normally require years or decades of aging in barrels to achieve.

The reactor takes accelerated aging to new heights, Jensen says. Producers have used chips and spirals of wood for years to boost the surface area of toasted wood, increasing the exchange rate with the bulk liquid and therefore reducing the contact time needed. “They are very good at extracting oak,” Jensen tells Newscripts. “You’ll get some tannins, some furfural—it’ll taste OK.”

But the chemistry of aging spirits goes deeper. “We have tamed the oxidation processes, the chemical transformation processes,” Jensen says. For example, wood contains free fatty acids that react with ethanol and trace amounts of butanol and propanol to make flavorful esters. EtOH works with the University of Copenhagen’s chemistry department to monitor about 50 molecules. “We would love to do 400, but that test is just way too expensive,” he says.

Without the need to maintain a massive barrel warehouse, EtOH can often match or beat the price of long-aged liquors even at their current small scale. And because they use less wood and lose less product to evaporation, Jensen says, their versions have a 36% smaller carbon footprint than conventionally made spirits.

Please send comments and suggestions to newscripts@acs.org.