Capsaicin, can it dissolve in alkaline water or must oil/alcohol be used?

H

HotShot

I'm working on a beverage and would like to add some fire to it but am trying to avoid using alcohol or oil based capsaicin. Tinctures & extracts are usually found in alcohol bases, but would an alkaline water work as a solvent? If so the use of capsaicin crystals dissolved in alkaline water would make life easier (and cheaper than bottles of extract).

I'm not a chemist so pardon my layman's question if it is a foolish one.

Thanks for any input!
 
:welcome: HotShot.

I'm thinking it probably wouldn't dissolve very well in water of any pH. From what I've seen, it does not dissolve in water at all. Needs to be oil or alcohol. Seeing as you're making a beverage, I'm guessing you're not going to want to totally "fry the face off" but just give it some zing? A product called Pure Evil is designed exactly for what it sounds like you are doing. While it does have alcohol in it, the percentage is so tiny, and you would only need 1-2 drops per glass.

I'm in the middle of a big project over the next few days, but if I remember over the weekend, I might mixing up some alkaline water and give it a try.

Good Luck-
salsalady
 
Hey, thanks for the info. I'm slowly uncovering some possible options (ClearCap and Aquaresin Capsicum for example) but am still hoping to find a way to mix crystals into the beverage. I wonder if lime juice could dissolve it. Time for more research. Thanks for the tip on Pure Evil, I'll track some down & see if that'll work as well.

The bright side is after all my experimenting I should have a nice shelf of awesome goodies that didn't make the cut.

Cheers!
 
Don't see any reason not to use alcohol, the amount needed would be trivial and the beverage would still qualify as non-alcoholic. I'm not even sure it would be required to list alcohol on the label as ingredients like vanilla extract don't need to list the alcohol, AFAIK. On the other hand, there are oils in some popular beverages like Orange Crush (soybean oil).
 
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