Remixing a drink.

[Tricky]

Yeah.. I thought I'd get creative tonight. No, I'm just kidding.

My mother has been diagnosed with diabetes two months ago. The not so bad type, where you can do with pills instead of injections. I really feel for her and my dad (he kinda has to give up sugar along with her). Now, aside from all the desserts she can no longer prepare & eat, which she totally loved doing, she also has to give up on her favourite drink, Martini Rosso.

I've been kinda thinking about if there isn't anything I can do for her. Maybe buy her a Martini mixing set or something, with a few personal 'tweaks'. Those sets can be bought, it's really not much of a problem. The tweaks on the other hand require some thinking.

From what I can tell, Martini is made up of wine, sugar and spirits (Vodka/Gin). I think spirits generally have a higher amount of sugar, though I'm not quite sure. It seems kinda obvious that it should become more concentrated due to the distillation process. If that's the case, has anyone ever heard of a 'light' Vodka or Gin? People invent the craziest light things these days, so I'm sure there has to be a Vodka Light somewhere.

My second question is related to the amount of sugar that's dissolved directly into the Martini mix. Can it be replaced by artificial sweeteners? Has anyone ever heard of something like that?

[Xandax]

Never heard of it - but one would think there would be a market for it - but isn't sugar an important ingredient of the chemical process of making spirits?
It would be hard to make without I think, but I am no chemist or spirits-brewer, so this is based on small bits picked up here and there.

[VonDondu]

Without getting into any complex chemistry issues, it's safe to say that moderate consumption of alcohol can either raise your blood sugar or lower it. The catch-all explanation is "it just depends" because the effects of alcohol vary from one person to the next. To put it mildly, this makes things unpredictable.

The Mayo Clinic has some general information on the subject. They emphasize that you need to adapt your entire lifestyle to your own condition. As far as diabetes is concerned, it might be okay to have up to two drinks per day if your body can handle it. (But as CE would tell you, ANY amount of alcohol is dangerous to your body's cells, which is a separate issue.) One warning that stands out to me is that you shouldn't drink any alcohol at all if you have retinopathy, which sometimes accompanies diabetes.

As for how to mix your mother's favorite drink, I'm not sure what you're talking about. To me, "Martini Rosso" refers to a brand of vermouth that is used in a variety of drinks.

[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.

[Tricky]

Yes, but after the process, the sugar is mostly gone right? That's consumed and turned into alcohol and carbon dioxide (and whatever the grist transforms it into). I could just add gin with white wine and add sweeteners instead of extra sugar. The extra sugar doesn't turn into alcohol, it more likely just unbalance thus stop the process. If it shouldn't normally contribute, why not replace the extra sugar with sweeteners?

Quote:

poor yeast wouldn't probably even know what they are

Well, it wouldn't matter for the extra sugar. Uh, I think. Besides, it wouldn't survive the distillation process before it becomes Gin.

I'm kind of assuming Martini is just a blend of.. well the stuff I mentioned. The alcohol percentage is already quite high, so I doubt the final mix can still season and become more alcoholic. But know very little about this stuff, so it might as well be the case. Spirits can't become more alcoholic the natural way, but I think wine might. I don't know, perhaps if they would use a fairly young white wine so there'd still be some sugars left to transform (edit: oh, but the added sugar in the martini mix could take care of that) in a relatively alcohol free environment in which the yeast can survive. In a sense, it could work if the wine diluted the spirits enough.

Hm, that made more sense than I was expecting.

[Avane]

How about a 'dry martini'? You'd think that by definition it would not be sugary. Gin (or vodka), a dash of vermouth (don't know about the martini rosso assoc with vermouth, - see Vondondu before, but have heard vermouth described as 'dry' ) and an olive or if salt is an issue, one of those little silverskin onions. But, yeah, would be tough on your Mum to give up her little treat.

[Tricky]

Yeah, about the Rosso.. I was copy pasting things from wiki articles. I think I mixed up some words at some point. I meant plain *Martini*.

I don't know much about these different mixes, but dry sounds like a good plan. It's basically what I had in mind without adding the sweeteners. Maybe I'll try adding sweeteners to alcohol myself this weekend, just so I won't accidentally end up poisoning her.

[Galuf the Dwarf]

Tricky, my dad came close to having Diabetes himself. He's had a thing for cheap beer for years. He also had a thing a few years for having heaping bowls of ice cream.

Fortunately, he seems to have gotten that under relative control, partly by cutting back a bit on his alcohol consumption AND cutting much of the ice cream out of his appetite.

I even had an incident that made me watch how much sugar I eat myself, though. When I was 18, I ended up going to a blood donation event at my high school, and scarfed down a few too many donuts. Let's just say I wouldn't do that again.

[Tricky]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Galuf the Dwarf I even had an incident that made me watch how much sugar I eat myself, though. When I was 18, I ended up going to a blood donation event at my high school, and scarfed down a few too many donuts. Let's just say I wouldn't do that again.

Funny, aside from the doughnuts that's exactly how my mother found out she has diabetes. She doesn't eat much and she always did the little things like adding only half a spoon of sugar in her cup of tea. She is the last person I'd ever figured to get diabetes.

Your warning about ice cream has me worried though. I eat maybe two or three of those one litre buckets every week. I just love eating ice cream while watching a movie, it's a habit I picked up from my late girlfriend. My body is one of those mutant ones that can't get fat or anything so I'm never worried about food. I only watch the amount of lactose I ingest because that can get.. messy.