Crystals in the bottom of my booze - what could they be?

You are essentially growing Rock Candy…be careful as the longer this liquor evaporates the stronger the liquor gets.

The only thing that would concern me, I think – because not much that has lived or can live will survive immersion in schnapps for very long (including me) – would be that the crystals might be broken glass from a defective part of the bottling operation (or even from the inside of this bottle itself) that had previously escaped detection.

I’d suggest taking the bottle back to the packie and asking for a replacement.

Uhhh… @Cruiser, what you said is a logical impossibility.

@CWOTUS Back to the what?

@CWOTUS Seriously?? Peppermint Schnapps is nothing but pure sugar, corn syrup, water and vodka. Take the cap off, hang and string down the middle of the bottle and as the water evaporates, I guarantee you that you will have yummy rock candy growing in no time.

Sugar.

@Cruiser

Take the cap off hang and string down the middle of the bottle and as the water evaporates, I guarantee you that you will have yummy rock candy growing in no time.

Have you done the string thing before?

Yipee, let’s go to @Mariah‘s and help her by drinking that BAD stuff. . . .

@Cruiser – How can liquor get stronger as it evaporates? That’s what @CWOTUS seems to be questioning – if it has evaporated it has disspated into the air and thus is no longer in the bottle, leaving the rock candy you describe, right?

Here’s a partial list of liqueurs that crystallize when dehydrated.

According that list, DeKuyper Peppermint Schnapps crystallizes but from what I can see, it doesn’t list the results for any other brands of PS.

@Cruiser I think you misunderstood me. You said that liquor would become stronger as the liquor evaporates. As alcohol evaporates there is… less alcohol.

I’m not disagreeing about the sugar. I agree that the crystal is “most likely” sugar, but it could be glass.

@glacial “the packie” is short for “the package store”, which is what liquor stores in Massachusetts are called.

@CWOTUS Weird. Of course, here we’d say “the dep”, which would probably seem weird to outsiders.

OP, Aftershock has so much sugar in it that it often has at least ¼” of rock candy in the bottom. This is common to other schnapps to a lesser extent.

@jerv Rock & Rye also has a crazy amount of sugar, then again the name kinda implies that.

It’s almost certainly sugar. If you’re worried it’s glass (though if the bottle isn’t broken anywhere and you didn’t notice them before I have trouble believing it is) you can try and break some off and get it out, then try dissolving it in hot water. If it does, you’re good, if not, be concerned.

And, as the chemist, @CWOTUS is correct; the liquor would not get ‘stronger’, at least not by that metric. The alcohol would either evaporate first leaving you with weaker schnapps (but probably not by a noticeable amount), or together with the water depending on the percentage. It would probably be stronger in terms of the peppermint taste, though.

Good test, @BhacSsylan.

I don’t strongly think that it’s glass; I’d be more likely to believe that it’s sugar, given the composition of the liquor and the unlikelihood of it being glass in any case. When you’re in the plains in North America and hear hoofbeats, you should think “horses” and not “zebras”. But if you get run over by zebras in either North America or Africa, it’s going to hurt – so I’d look anyway, to be on the safe side.

Thanks y’all. My mind is eased.

I don’t think it’s glass because it wasn’t there when I first bought it (at least not that I noticed) and its very cubularly-shaped, like I would expect a sugar crystal to be.