Does watering down alcohol make it less potent?
Does watering down alcohol make it less potent? Adding water to wine / spirits will not reduce the alcohol content. It will decrease the Alcohol By Volume (ABV%), because the volume increases and the actual alcohol content remains the same.
How do you dilute high proof alcohol?
If you need a tincture with 40% alcohol and your high-proof alcohol is at 95%, you need to dilute it by roughly 55%, which means you need to add 55% water to your high-proof alcohol, resulting in a diluted alcohol that contains just a bit more than 40% alcohol.
Why is diluted alcohol better?
Adding water dilutes the alcohol, which reduces the burn and allows other properties to reveal themselves. But there's also something significant happening on a molecular level. Aroma molecules share more chemical likenesses with alcohol than they do with water. As such, they tend to bind with alcohol.