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I wanted to make a chocolatey drink, but creme de cacao is way too sweet. So I decided to try making chocolate vodka. I added about 3/4 cup of 63% chips (Guittard extra dark) into a small magic bullet blender cup. I then covered it in vodka, plus an extra ~1/2". I blended it a bit, opened it up, and decided it smelled too sweet, so I added 1-2 tbsp cocoa powder. I then blended it until almost all the chips were pulverized. I poured it into a jar and left it overnight.

That was last night. This morning, I shook up the jar, to help it infuse more. I thought it looked strange, so I opened it up. As far as I can tell, everything but the largest chunks of chocolate has dissolved. It looks and pours like chocolate syrup. What happened? I guess the fat and sugar dissolved into the water & ethanol, and the solids are suspended?

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    the fat won't dissolve into water, so it must be something else
    – Luciano
    Commented Jul 20, 2021 at 8:21
  • Did the texture change overnight or was it also syrupy immediately after blending?
    – dbmag9
    Commented Jul 20, 2021 at 9:30
  • @Luciano vodka is not water, fat dissolves in alcohol just fine.
    – rumtscho ♦
    Commented Jul 20, 2021 at 12:13
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    @dbmag9 The texture changed overnight. Immediately after blending it was just a suspension of chocolate fragments, which mostly settled, fairly quickly.
    – Ethan Reesor
    Commented Jul 20, 2021 at 17:27
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    @rumtscho This experiment did not at all behave how I expected. I want to understand why.
    – Ethan Reesor
    Commented Jul 20, 2021 at 17:30

1 Answer 1

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So the sugar is most likely dissolved in equal parts in the water and ethanol, while that fat is dissolved completely in the alcohol. The most likely reason why your drink solidified would be in my opinion that it was a bit warmer while blending because of the friction so the fats partially melted, which also helped the dissolving into the alcohol process and while cooling down the chocolate fats solidified and now it has this syrupy consistency. Carefully warming it again would most likely make it liquidy again. Tho alcohol does work as an emulsifier for water and fat so this might have also happened, so it might not become completely liquid again

For the solids: In a portion of 15g there are 5g of fat and 6g of sugars in it. With an additional 2g of other carbs. Meaning there is about 2/15 g or about 15% of additional weight in there. Coincidentally the water content of chocolate is somewhere between 10 and 20% so that extra weight is going to be mostly water.

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  • When I blended it, it started as chocolate chips in vodka and became a suspension of small chocolate fragments in vodka, which quickly settled out. The next day, it was something else. I would still call it a liquid, but it’s definitely thicker than room temp vodka. Also, when I blended it the vodka was just out of the freezer.
    – Ethan Reesor
    Commented Jul 20, 2021 at 17:25
  • This is indeed weird. Where did you store it overnight? Fridge?
    – SirHawrk
    Commented Jul 21, 2021 at 7:42
  • I left it on the counter
    – Ethan Reesor
    Commented Jul 21, 2021 at 7:42

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