Distillation of brain tissue is a commonly used technique in the determination of brain ethanol concentrations. However, distillation suffers the disadvantages of being both time consuming and cumbersoim in the forensic laboratory. In this study, we present a new, rapid method for the determination of ethanol content in brain tissue samples. This method employs solvent extraction with nbutanol and subsequent gas chromatographic analysis using n-propanol as an internal standard. The sensitivity of this technique was found to be similar to that obtained by distillation. The solvent extraction method presented has the advantages of rapidity of assay and ease of quantitation.