Abv

I enjoy making homemade root beer schnapps. However I keep getting the same question what is the alcohol content of my concoction. Is there any way of finding out even a best guess.

Just in case anybody wants to know. I have four ingredients in my concoction. First and foremost is my base alcohol which I use the Polish rectified spirit which is 96 proof or 196 ABV. My second ingredient is distilled water. My third ingredient is sugar. And last but not least the flavoring.

Because of the sugar added a hydrometer or refractometer won't work. You would have to do the calculation from the volumes that you combined. Beersmith2 has a dilution tool that would work but we would need to know the volumes for someone to calculate it.

It will be pretty close to the ratio of your 196 proof spirit to water. For example a 50/50 mixture of spirit to water will give you nearly 50% ABV or 100 proof. The sugar and flavoring takes up some volume but it's probably not as much as one might think since it dissolves to a lesser volume, unless you use a ton of it.

I would mix all the other ingredients separately (water, sugar, flavorings). Then you'll know the exact volume of them... and you can calculate your end abv from your beginning abv (since you know the volume of alcohol and the volume of non alcohol).

I have been asked the same question on my Polish krupnik and what I did was measure the volume of the finished batch and did the math to find how diluted the grain alcohol in that batch had become.