[QuenGalad]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xandax but isn't sugar an important ingredient of the chemical process of making spirits?

Yep, that's it.
Alcohol can be made in many ways, but most of them ineffective from business point of view. The alcohols we drink are all made trough the proess of fermentation - the stronger ones, like vodka, are distilled later, but still fermentation is he key.

Well, fermantation is done by yeast - it is a side-effect of their own process of nutrition. But, yeast is (are? dunno, in polish you can only have plural yeast ) only able to "eat" the least complicated sugars, that being galactose and fructose. Every other sugar is much more complex chemically and therefore of no use to the yeast. That is why, when making beer, you have to add barley grist - it contains enzymes that work more compilcated sugars down to galactose.

That's why you can't make alcohol on artificial sweeters, beacause they are, basically, compilcated like hell, and poor yeast wouldn't probably even know what they are.