I am not very good at math and/or formulas, so I was curious to know what the “toxicity” or alcoholic content would be of a cocktail of these proportions:
1.5 ounces Venezuelan Rum
0.5 ounces sweet vermouth
1 teaspoon Grand Marnier
2 dashes orange bitters
Absinthe rinsed coupe glass
I get 60% from the rum (40% x 1.5)
12% from the vermouth
5% from the Grand Marnier
and less than 3% from the bitters & absinthe rinse
If stirred over ice, Would that still make the entire drink make 80% alcohol?
You’re thinking about the math a little backward. You need to figure out the volume of pure ethanol in each ingredient, and then determine what percentage that is of the total drink volume.
For simplicity, I’ll ignore the bitters/absinthe since the quantities are pretty small.
So .74664 oz of alcohol in 2.1666 oz total volume = ~34.5% ABV pre-stirring.
Factor in ~20% dilution from stirring and the finished drink is more like 28% ABV.
Shameless plug: the private recipe feature of Total Mixology/Total Tiki Online will estimate total alcohol and ABV for you just by plugging in the recipe. For 95%+ of recipes, this is little more than a copy/paste and button press. (In this case, one additional edit was required to handle the rinse.)
