Ingredient percentages in legal descriptions of spirits?

[rubicon_in_ga]

When a 'legal' description for a particular spirit says 'must be made from at least 51% corn' or 'made from a mixture of at least 35% rye, 20% corn, 25% malted barley' (I'm making these numbers up), what constitutes the percentages? For instance if it says 51% corn, does that mean 51% corn, 49% water? or 51% corn, 49% sugar/other ingredients? How would the percentage be measured? By weight or volume? In other words, if we're making 100 gallons of mash, that's a volume measurement, so how would the percentage of ingredients be measured? Would it be like 51lbs of corn, 49lbs of sugar, or 51cups of corn, 49cups sugar, etc?

I hope this post makes sense. For the legal references I'm talking about, refer to the wikipedia's entry on American Whiskey.

Thanks for the help!

Jeremy

[Mr Shine]

Whiskey doesn't contain sugar. It's all grain.

As for percentages, they pertain to the grain bill. If say a bourbon has to have a minimum of 51% corn, it would need to have at least 51 pounds of corn in it for every 100 pounds of grain the maker would use (with the other 49% and 49 pounds being made up of barley, rye, wheat, or some other grain).

Bottom line: the percentages go by weight of the grains being used.

Hope that helps.

[rubicon_in_ga]

Okay that makes more sense... but then how do you know how many pounds of grain to use per gallon of water?

[Prairiepiss]

Now your getting into all grain calculation territory. And you need to research AG recipe development. And that is a lot of information. Here is a good place to start.
http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

If you are asking about a sugarhead? It couldn't be legally called a whiskey anyway. But you would go by like the UJSSM. And use the amount of grain recommended for that recipe.