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I have read some of the threads on proofing liqueurs and so forth and thought I had everything straight, but upon watching the TTB webinar (in tools/tutorials section of ttb website) on lab distillation I am confused. To give a quick rundown, they want you to fill a volumetric flask at 60 degress. Pour this into your lab still and rinse it with 50% the volume with distilled water. Proceed to distill up to 96% the original volume. Add the remaining 4% as distilled water and then calculate your proof of obscuration as the difference between this and your original reading. Before watching this video, I would have planned to take a known quantity of distillate by volume and distilled all of it. At this point, add water to bring it back to the original volume at the original recorded temp (no real need to be 60 degrees technically...) and take the new proof. The difference between the original proof and the proof after distillation is your proof of obscuration. This means your original proof is your recorded plus the proof of obscuration. If anyone can explain the TTB version I would appreciate it. Was my original way of thinking correct or not? I don't understand why one would stop at 96% yield in the TTB's example as you would be leaving both sugars and alcohol in the lab still. All help is appreciated. This is for a Old Tom Gin that is being sweetened with maple syrup. As a little add on question, does anyone know what a normal range is for sugar quantity in Old Tom Gin? I took some off the shelf that show obscuration of 14 proof and one that was .5 proof. They both showed the same brix reading (but of course alcohol is throwing that way off on my refractometer reading). Rather I should say, what the upper limit is for added sugar, as I know you can get by adding none just increasing sweeter botanicals. Thanks and cheers!
