like oil and water

[gfish]

Interesting thought experiment that came up during dinner: How would things be different if alcohol wasn't miscible with water?

Mixology would be a lot more difficult. You'd need to start with making an emulsion -- lots of eggnogy drinks.

We would have had hard alcohol available since the neolithic. Which means access to a really good solvent and disinfectant.

There would be more whales around right now, as there never would have been a demand for whale oil.

Ethanol as a fuel would be a lot more practical, without the energy needed to distill the damned stuff. The entire 20th century would be radically different with far fewer petro-dollars distorting things.

Are we missing anything?

Comments

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

Mixology would be a lot more difficult. You'd need to start with making an emulsion -- lots of eggnogy drinks.

It's doubtful that alcohol would be an appealing intoxicant at all. The high miscibility is what makes it quickly absorbed and allows in to penetrate cell membranes to have an effect on the CNS. An unmiscible version would either be dismantled or rapidly eliminated in the process of absorption, or if it did manage to stay long in the bloodstream intact, probably be protein bound and have very different effects. Poisonous? Benign? Who knows. It's hard to guess of course since the highly electronegative alcohol group, the polarity that makes it so miscible with water, is tied in to every part of the pharmacology of ethanol.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

Right. More to the point, the only way for ethanol to be immiscible in water would be the absence of hydrogen bonding, which would make both ethanol and water gasses at human temperatures. Which would pretty much mean no humans. Or oceans. Or life.

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

Which means access to a really good solvent and disinfectant.

Ahh, similar argument - if it's not miscible with water, it probably no longer has these properties.

[tereshkova2001.livejournal.com]

I was thinking that, actually. But it was a very silly, entertaining conversation.

[heyokish.livejournal.com]

Not sure about the alternate reality of alcohol, but I read this which you might find interesting:

Drinking Beer in a Blissful Mood: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/427119

some of it is about the "we farm because of BOOZE because of the feasting hypothesis and all progress is down to showing off" but is more about the practicalities of early brewing and distilling.