Posted on 07/15/2012 4:39:52 AM PDT by GOP_Party_Animal
I was gifted a few old bottles of booze. Among them was a bottle of Wiser's, a bottle of "Shenley American Wiskey", a bottle of "Shenley Gin", and a bottle of Crown Royal in addition to a few glass sample bottles from the same era. None of these have been opened and are sealed with a liquor tax stamp dating from 1959 for the bottle of Crown to the mid sixties.
I'm inclined to just open and drink them since I don't want to keep clutter just because it's old. But could I sell them? How? Do you think they have any value?
I read where you could safely consume old booze only if it was “distilled”. It should keep forever. Not distilled - do not drink.
I bought a large amount of distilled bottles of booze at an estate sale and not being a drinker sold them on craigslist. Not sure if what I did was legal or not.
I opened it with some friends to celebrate the Celtics 1984 Championship and ended up in the hospital 14 hours later.
Probable diagnosis was acetate poisoning.
Drink it.
With great respect and appreciation.
In reluctance, I’m concluding that to never use something is little different from destroying it. Use! Enjoy!
IIRC (from an old History Channel program), Whiskey (unlike, apparently, fine wine) only ‘ages’ in the wooden barrel, and the ageing process stops when it’s placed in glass - so your old booze is just the same ‘age’ as it was when it was bottled, and has not improved...
So, you might as well have that party.... ;)
Send them to me ...
Perhaps the alcohol content was too low or it wasn’t stored properly?
Glad you didn’t die.
http://cocktails.about.com/od/stockyourbar/f/liquor_storage.htm
More likely it was ethanol poisoning.
My blood pressure dropped to dangerous levels in the ambulance and was given an IV with electrolytes.
What caused the acetates forming in the brandy was the fact that the bottle was not moved for 40 years.
Alcohol is the devil. Throw it away.
“Acetates”.
Salts of acetic acid are not very poisonous.
Was this homemade booze?
Perhaps it was “Ethyl acetate”? That is a ester. It is most likely to have formed during fermentation and if not fractionated off, could cause problems.
send ‘em to the Ted Kennedy Recycling Center, 109 Kopechne St, Bunghole, MA
LOL!
Alcohol, as such, is not evil. Instead it has long held the almost unique label as “the neutral spirit”, shared only with money, which, as such, is also not evil on its own.
In a very septic world, and at times murderously septic, alcohol cleans, sterilizes, and preserves. It has in this way alone saved the lives of millions of people. Because of alcohol, mother and child mortality at birth and shortly thereafter, have plummeted.
Colds and flu transmit through the air optimally at 40F and low humidity. Higher temperature and humidity make these diseases much more reliant on hand contamination to spread. If you are out in public during an epidemic, and you use alcohol-based hand sanitizer about 6 times a day, you lower your risk of infection by over 60%. Typically, such sanitizer is made of ethanol, “drinking alcohol”.
Yet at the same time it is almost unique as a chemical, in that of the over 100 major brain chemicals, it changes the production, distribution and use of almost every one.
Alcohol should never be given to children under the age of 21 for a very good reason. This is because until the brain is fully mature at about that age, it is far more adaptable to addictive substances. The younger children are when they first start drinking alcohol, the worse this effect can be.
And once adapted, addiction is easier, not just then, but for the rest of their lives, and not just to alcohol, but to other addictive substances as well. And addictions, in adulthood, will be much harder to break.
Alcohol, to a great extent, was essential to the survival of early America. When farmers had an abundant crop, it was terribly expensive and difficult to move that crop to market. But by distilling it to alcohol, it was much easier to move and sell, giving them income to spend and increase their prosperity, as well as “savings” that could be used in the future when crops were poor for a season.
Even then, water was often contaminated with diseases in summer, and unsafe to drink, but alcoholic beverages were antiseptic, which also saved millions of lives.
EXCELLENT write up!
There is no substance in nature that is not dangerous under some condition, even essential ones like oxygen and water. Yes, some are toxic at any time but alcohol is not one of them.
Alcohol, like fire and government is a useful servant in moderation but a dangerous master and destroyer indeed when in excess!
But the worms and beetles eating him are all drunk...
That would be a Schenley American Rye Whiskey you got there. That was once one of the very best American whiskey’s. It was distilled in Schenley, PA along the banks of the Allegheny river until around 1978. I remember watching barrels of that whiskey floating down the Allegheny after hurricane Agnus hit the area in 1972. Oh the pain of it all!
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