On Mon, 12 May 2008 19:12:12 +0100, Tom Anderson
wrote:

On Mon, 12 May 2008, Charles Ellson wrote:

On Sun, 11 May 2008 21:11:31 +0100, Stimpy
wrote:

On Sun, 11 May 2008 20:42:22 +0100, Mark Morton wrote

Is it written down anywhere how much alcohol needs to be in something
before it's "an alcoholic beverage"?

ISTR it used to be 2%.

You are confusing percentage (of alcohol by volume) with degrees proof.
100deg proof = ~57 % abv ('Merkan measure is different).

Yes, which i've never got. My understanding is that British proof was
defined as the percentage of alcohol at which a mixture of the spirit with
gunpowder would explode when lit. Why the septics switched to the
gratuitously different, chemically meaningless and practically
no-better-than-ABV system of 1 degree = 0.5 % ABV, i really don't know.
The usual sheer wrongheadedness, i suppose.

Both systems seem to be somewhat arbitrary and at the mercy of the
actual composition and moisture content of the gunpowder (and/or the
surrounding atmosphere?). There is some description of the evolving
methods of determining proof in :-
http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/home/jhb/whisky/swa/chap6.html

WRT Stimpy's shandy mentioned in another post, the Sikes system
(designating in degrees proof) would seem to have not been replaced by
the current system (designation by percentage of alcohol) until 1980.