![]() ![]() Legislation and obscure tax regulations aren't going to help someone like that, but a good substance-abuse counselor, psychiatrist, or rehab clinic might.SANDWICH - If you've been to the Stop & Shop at 71 Quaker Meetinghouse Road for vanilla extract or its imitation for your cookies and cakes, you are not alone in having trouble finding it in the baking aisle. Which brings us back to the poor souls who drink vanilla extract to get drunk, who probably safely fall outside the common standard for a "reasonable person" by that point. The unenviable job of testing vanilla extracts to make sure that no sane, mature, or mentally and emotionally healthy person would want to drink them straight? Yep, that falls to the TTB too, which subjects flavor extracts to a series of tests to make sure they're not going to end up the next big thing at high-school post-prom parties across America. To qualify as a flavor extract and get that big drawback, a vanilla extract still has to be judged non-potable. That deal still comes with a catch, though. The vanilla-extract guys would have to shell out a ton more money if they (for whatever reason) decided they wanted to be treated like the liquor guys. government $13.50 per gallon of Captain Morgan rum it makes with an alcohol content of 40 percent, manufacturer Nielsen-Massey effectively pays a much more attractive $1 for every gallon of vanilla extract it makes with the same percentage of alcohol. ![]() So while liquor behemoth Diageo pays the U.S. ![]() Flavor-extract manufacturers pay that amount too, but because their product isn't ultimately going to become an alcoholic beverage, they're entitled to a "drawback," or refund, of $12.50 per gallon. Alcohol used in liquor is taxed at $13.50 per gallon by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (better known as the TTB), the offshoot of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms that was formed during federal-bureaucracy shuffle that followed the Sept. Vanilla extract falls mostly under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration as a food product and not the stricter governmental regulations for spirits or liqueur, even though an alien chemist might be hard pressed to tell you what the physical difference between the two is.Ī lot of the reason that's still the case is the money. Though Prohibition was repealed, the groundwork that era laid for defining vanilla extract as a completely different animal than liquor is still solid. And yet we can buy it in a supermarket next to the giant kiddie-birthday-cake number candles. So vanilla extract’s the same proof as Captain Morgan rum, enough to get naive teens and irresponsible middle-aged women into enough trouble to land them in the E.R. In 2004, doctors in Seattle reported a notable case of intoxication in a 16-year-old boy who'd gotten drunk after his friends dared him to down a 12-ounce bottle vanilla extract. Poison centers and emergency rooms around the country regularly report patients who have to be hospitalized because they downed mouthwash, cough syrup, or alcohol-based flavorings in their attempts to get loaded. ![]() People getting drunk or trying to get drunk on household products containing ethanol (the kind of alcohol we mean when we talk about booze) is hardly uncommon. The bizarre story involving an upstate New York woman who buzzed in at three times the legal blood-alcohol limit after allegedly downing a bottle of vanilla extract led us to ask the question: If it's same proof as rum or vodka, why isn't vanilla extract regulated like liquor? (Jägermeister is 70 proof, or 35-percent alcohol, while most vanilla extract hovers between 35 and 40 percent.) In fact, you can make your own vanilla extract with just some vanilla beans and a bottle of cheap booze. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |