Glow Party Beverages

There comes a time in the life of a Gargoyle when cavorting with fairies makes it imperative to supply a party with glow-in-the-dark alcoholic beverages.

It turns out that vitamin B2, aka riboflavin, glows in blacklight, and according to the internet so do things it's added to. It also turns out that your average grocery store and corner pharmacy stock B6, B12 and B-complex, but not B2, but internet to the rescue.

If one is inclined to be cautious about ingesting random nutritional supplements recreationally, and one likely should be, B2 can be gotten in 100mg pills. One is recommended to not exceed daily doses of 400mg, so if 1 pill per bottle suffices, one would far sooner suffer from too much alcohol than too much vitamin. And the consequences of too much vitamin are relatively benign, so onward!

The first experiment was to crush a pill and drop the contents into a quarter-ful bottle of gin, an unopened bottle ready for comparison. The gin turned a disturbing yellow. There was unsightly sediment on the bottom. But with a blacklight on it turned a fantastic yellowish green. Success! (The flavor was unaffected).

[Arrgh, can't add caption to this picture format! (1) One crushed B2 pill, and a pair of bottles of identical gin, one with said crushed pill and one without, (2) under regular light and then (3) under blacklight]

Leaving the mix to its own devices for a week neither made the sediment dissolve nor did the vitamin settle or separate, and the glow remained uniform.

In addition to the active ingredient the vitamin pill contained all sorts of other stuff - perhaps filtering it out would improve the appearance without affecting the glow?

Drip. Drip. Driiiiip.

We filled a measuring cup with water, crushed a pill and dropped it in. The water provided the requisite glow, confirming that a single pill is plenty for a quart of a clear liquid. We then poured it into a jar through a funnel with a coffee filter. The icky sediment stayed on the filter. The yellowish tinge and glowiness stayed with the liquid!

The gin promptly got the filter treatment and looked much better.

It later occurred that it was not necessary to filter the whole darn thing. The process became to crush the pill (or several), pour just enough beverage into it to dissolve, pour it back via the funnel structure, and do that again to rinse any remaining vitamin goodness from the crush bowl.

But what about liquids that don't start out clear? A quarter-bottle of dark rum was nominated to suffer the experiment.

Gin compared to rum. See that green tinge?

There was so little rum in the measuring cup that half a pill seemed like it might be plenty, but the dark liquid did not seem too impressed. In the second half of the pill went.

In natural light the filtered rum back in the bottle did not seem distinguishable from its starting state - unlike the yellow of clear liquids the caramel color hid the tampering. On the minus side, while it did glow, the result was not very dramatic: a nice radioactive sludge effect in direct UV, but far subtler than its clear neighbors if the blacklight was even slightly further away.

Upping the vitamin content did help a bit.

The next step was to test-drive the beverages in mixed drinks.

The gin became a martini: 2 parts gin, 1 part vermouth, a dash of orange bitters and an olive. Being 50% diluted with a brownish liquid (vermouth) did not diminish the glow.

To really put the rum through its paces, testing it by doubling down on another caramel-colored liquid seemed in order. The inspiration was provided by this here amaretto smash: crush a strawberry (with sugar rather than simple syrup because it's nicely abrasive) and a tiny splash of lemon, but the ratios skewed to 1 oz rum and 1 oz amaretto to give the rum a chance to shine.

The surface glowed under the most direct exposure, but it was nearly impossible to light it from the side. But the recipe was delicious and worth repeating. (Note, around here we don't strain the muddled fruit out, we let it soak and snack on it gleefully.)

Success! Time to adulterate the beverages for the party.

Verdict: Terrible cheap Canadian whiskey, 400mg for 1.5L. Gold tequila, 200mg. Vodka, 100mg. Partygoers were suitably entertained, with plenty left over to reprise at other occasions or to figure out weirder things to make of them.