Does anyone knows how to calculate percentage of alcohol in the recipe.The truffles that we make have 35oz of syrup and 10.5oz of 40% ABV whiskey in one badge. That is 60 truffles.The alcohol meter shows nothing. In sweet alcoholic filling it doesn't work ( floating on top)If someone has a path for this problem, I would really appreciate.Also, I can't find border line for necessity of a liqueur license for selling these chocolates. Looks like if Georgia nobody taking is serious enough.
updated by @arthur-shapiro: 04/11/15 13:56:45

You have two issues to deal with: The law and the actual calculation.

Each state has its own take on the law for alcohol in chocolates. The National Confectionary Association compiles a list of the various state laws...but the versions that you can find online without an account are not quite correct. You need to go to your own state website to find the correct info.

Some states prohibit any alcohol in a confection. Others permit alcohol only from 'flavorings' (excluding alcohol from beverages, even if you are using the beverage only for flavoring, and you have to go to the federal laws to see what the difference is). Some have a limit of 5% ABV, others 0.5% ABV, and still others 0.5% _by weight_.

For Georgia, check out http://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2010/title-26/chapter-2/article-2/26-2-26 It looks like Georgia limits you to 0.5% ABV with the alcohol coming from flavoring extracts only.

The second issue is that you need to figure out exactly how much alcohol is actually present in your formulation. In many ways it is easier if you can just figure by weight.

Something that is 40% ABV simply means that 100ml of the total solution consists of 40 ml of pure ethanol plus sufficient other material to make 100ml of total solution. So if you have 310ml of 40% ABV whiskey, then you have 124ml of pure ethanol mixed in with other stuff.

If you then dilute this 310ml of whiskey down to make 1000ml of 'stuff', then the resulting stuff would be 12.4% ABV.

step 1) What is the _volume_ of whiskey you are using (was that 10.5 fluid ounces, or 10.5 ounces by weight??)

step 2) What is the total _volume_ of your finished product (which might be a bit difficult to measure)

step 3) Multiply the volume of whiskey by 0.4 to get the volume of alcohol, and then divide the volume of alcohol by the total formula volume to get the ABV of the finished product.

-Jon