What Does Proof Mean When Talking About Alcohol?

Proof measures the alcohol content of a drink.

Go into a liquor store and you will find various proofs of liquor, depending on the bottle of spirits. Proof is simply a way of explaining how much alcohol is in a beverage.

Origin

Rum and gunpowder will ignite.

Proof is a term that originated in England. It is still used there today. Sailors would put gunpowder into rum to see if the rum would ignite. If it did ignite, the rum was 100 proof, or at least 57 percent alcohol. If it did not ignite, they knew that someone had watered down the rum.

Meaning

Stronger liquor can have a very high alcohol content.

One hundred percent proof alcohol means that the liquid in question is 4/7 alcohol by volume, or more than half pure alcohol. Stronger spirits can have proofs of 60 to 160 proof, which means that some of the drinks are almost 100 percent alcohol.

Labeling

You can compare drinks by comparing the percentage of alcohol.

In the United States, people have moved away from the traditional proof as a way to explain alcohol content. Instead, alcohol is shown as a percentage by volume. A 100-proof liquid in the U.K. would translate as roughly a 57% alcohol percentage by volume in the U.S.

References

• Wilson, Jason: Understanding alcohol proof