History Main / WateringDown

* On a lighter note, diluting alcohol with sodas or fruit juices to make larger, less alcoholic beverages is one of the staples of modern bartending.

* Lana Lee, the business-minded owner of the Night of Joy bar in ''AConfederacyOfDunces'' also waters down the drinks of her "hostess" Darlene...but she also waters down ''all the other drinks'' as a cost-cutting measure. [[JiveTurkey Burma Jones]] frequently comments on it.

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* In some versions of the {{Batman}} franchise, the Penguin has shifted from outright crime to running a nightclub, where he makes far more money selling overpriced souvenirs and, yes, watered-down drinks.

[[AC:Film]]
* In ''AmericanPsycho'', a couple of the yuppies complain about how the cocaine they've been sold is "a gram of fucking Nutrasweet".

[[AC:Literature]]
* Examples from {{Discworld}}:

* Lana Lee, the business-minded owner of the Night of Joy bar in ''AConfederacyOfDunces'' also waters down the drinks of her "hostess" Darlene...but she also waters down ''all the other drinks'' as a cost-cutting measure. [[JiveTurkey Burma Jones]] frequently comments on it.

[[AC:Live Action TV]]

[[AC:Video Games]]

[[AC:Western Animation]]

** This was also done DELIBERATELY by the government to prevent industrial alcohol from getting consumed. This worked as well as you might expect: [[http://www.slate.com/id/2245188 not]]. Contemporary comments to this were: "The government is under no obligation to furnish the people with alcohol that is drinkable, when the Constitution prohibits it. The person who drinks this alcohol is a deliberate suicide." and "If the Senator's theory is that alcohol is so poisonous, then why put poison in it?" (the second quote is not a response to the first one).

* Rationing in WorldWarII led to this -- in more ways than one. During the siege of Leningrad, the food situation got so precarious that the Soviets started issuing bread filled out with ''sawdust'', and the Germans themselves would later give the foodstuff to POWs, impressed foreign workers and concentration camp internees.

** This is a very common reason for a drug-related deaths actually. As established dealers try to capitalize on their status, they tend to progressively dilute their ware with various adulterants, forcing their clients to buy a larger and larger amounts of drug for the same kick. And when a new dealer moves in and tries to compete by selling a stronger, more pure stuff, the users very often use the dosage they got used to with the old, diluted drug for the new, more pure one, leading to overdose.

* Apparently, according to TheTalmud, in ancient Israel and Babylonia, wine was made so strong that it was actually undrinkable unless mixed with water in a ratio of about 2 parts water to 1 part wine.

** This is actually in TheBible even; when Jesus performed his first miracle, he didn't turn water into any old wine, he turned it into ''the very best'' wine, and one of the guests passes comment about it to the host, since the usual practice was to not just water it down but trot out a cheaper wine overall.

[[AC:TruthInTelevision]]
* TruthInTelevision to a massive degree. While alcohol with a little bit of water is often forgivable, ScareEmStraight DrugsAreBad presentations like pointing out how dealers cut marijuana and other drugs with everything from carpet strands to hair. Even camel shit.
** Uh...dried plants (which, after all, pot is) like herbs, or even literal grass, might be a more plausible cutting agent when it comes to marijuana. You'd have to be quite stoned already not to notice ''hair'' in your bud, especially when you went to roll/pack it. Of course, the prospect of smoking the contents of a spice rack is less effective as a bullshit scare tactic.
** The danger of getting poisonous stuff (well, more poisonous than the drug, anyway) into weed is one of the reasons that mariuhana is permitted in the Netherlands: you can't do a quality control on illegal stuff.

* The British Royal Navy served "grog" (watered down rum) to its sailors.
** More like rummed up water, the ratio was something like 4 or 3 parts water to rum. (the rum was intented to keep the stagnant water sterile)
*** This was also done to moderate the sailors' drinking. The daily ration wasn't enough to get really soused anyway, but issuing it watered down discouraged sailors from hoarding up their rations and going on a bender.
* Rationing in WorldWarII led to this --in more ways than one. During the siege of Leningrad, the food situation got so precarious that the Soviets started issuing bread filled out with ''sawdust'', and the Germans themselves would later give the foodstuff to POWs, impressed foreign workers and concentration camp internees.

* This was done with milk and even bread depressingly often. (Milk would be mixed with water, bread with chalk, plaster, grit and worse...) There's an incredible amount of legislation on this in older legal systems, often putting it on the same severity scale as theft and murder.
** That's because if you do it hard enough, with the right (for a given value of right) materials, the results ''are'' an indirect form of murder: if you make your bread filling but with the nutritional value of cardboard by mixing sawdust with ''just'' enough flour for it to produce something that is not ''too'' obviously not bread...well, [[Literature/GoodOmens Sable would approve highly of the ultimate results.]]

* In some versions of the {{Batman}} franchise, the Penguin has shifted from outright crime to running a nightclub, where he makes far more money selling cheap souvenirs and, yes, watered-down drinks.

** That's because if you do it hard enough, with the right (for a given value of right) materials, the results ''are'' an indirect form of murder: if you make your bread filling but with the nutritional value of cardboard by mixing sawdust with ''just'' enough flour for it to produce something that is not ''too'' obviously not bread...well, [[GoodOmens Sable would approve highly of the ultimate results.]]

** A certain class of snobs like to label their alcohol backwards (so that whiskey is read as "yeksihw" and port as "trop") to prevent their servants from stealing sips from the bottles. In response, the butlers top the bottles up with "eniru".

* Rationing in WorldWarII led to this.

** A certain class of snobs like to label their alcohol with the words spelled backward, to prevent the servants from stealing. In revenge, their butlers have taken to topping off the whiskey with "eniru" [[spoiler:urine]].

** This is a very common reason for a drug-related deaths actually. As established dealers try to capitalize on their status, they tend to progressively dilute their ware with various adulterants, forcing their clients to buy a larger and larger amounts of drug for the same kick. An when a new dealer moves in and tries to compete by selling a stronger, more pure stuff, the users very often use the dosage they got used to with the old, diluted drug for the new, more pure one, leading to overdose.

* This troper heard an account of a bear that broke into an empty cabin and got into the owner's beer supply. It started drinking the cheap beer, but left it alone after finding the good stuff and drinking it all.

-->''On the hill the stuff was laced with kerosene''
-->''But yours was kitchen clean''
-->-- SteelyDan, "Kid Charlemagne"

* And as for good old fashioned watering down beer? The trick isn't to water it down with water. That gets spotted. Instead, you water down expensive beers with cheap beer. OrSoIHeard.