Powdered alcohol will likely be hitting shelves this fall, after the federal government approved the application of a company called Palcohol.
According to Palcohol, users can make their own cocktail by simply adding 5 ounces of liquid to either of the company's vodka or rum packets that are pre-measured to one-shot servings. The company also plans to release four pre-mixed cocktail packets that come with additional powdered flavoring to make cosmopolitans, mojitos, margaritas, and lemon drops.
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The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) approved the application from Palcohol, which is owned by a privately held company called Lipsmark, on April 8,
according to BevLaw.com.
The inventor, Mark Phillips, told the law blog that, "The TTB was cautious. It took us nearly four years to get the approval."
Nonetheless, the company said on its website that it was "caught off guard by the TTB making some of our approved labels public, which we now know is standard procedure."
Those labels, culled from an old version of Palcohol's website that has since been overhauled, were picked up by several news outlets like
USA Today and
The Washington Times with alarm.
The labels advocated for smuggling the powders into sporting events, sprinkling the powder over food items, and even discussed snorting the powder, which it confirmed would get users drunk very quickly.
The language around these subjects has since been revised or nixed altogether, and the company apologized for the labels, claiming that the "humorous and edgy verbiage about Palcohol ... was not meant to be our final presentation of Palcohol."
It remains to be seen if the product might run afoul of any state laws, what the company's production capabilities are, or what the packets will ultimately cost consumers.
On the website, Phillips' biography says that he was the host of "Enjoying Wine with Mark Phillips" which "aired on over 300 public television stations nationwide from 2006 to 2012."
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