I feel like it would be useful to know exactly how much alcohol is in a can or a bottle. Also why is alcohol the only thing measured in percentages and not sugar or caffeine or medicine?

  • Blyfh@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    That still doesn’t give us a reason why customers have this special calculated value. You could just multiply the volume by this percentage to get the absolute value. Why is the percentage preferred over the volume? I see no reason for either side.

    • krellor@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      Like I said, because the percent doesn’t change with the volume served. If you are an 1800s brewer you can calculate the ABV from samples, and subsequently sell kegs of various sizes, bottles, which in turn can be served in various amounts and the percent doesn’t change. And the industry never changed, nor the laws written. So it’s the way it is because that is how they used to do it and how laws were written and there hadn’t been a motivation for people to change that.

    • pelya@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      You have to print a separate label for each bottle size then. Much easier to print something like ‘10% strength’ and slap the same label on all of your barrels and bottles regardless of their volume.