Sunday 22 March 2009

Rakia Alcohol Content Judged By Bubble Watching

RakiaImage by outang via Flickr

Sometimes there are tricks that just astound you when witnesses. This particular trick was performed by a Bulgarian who had been making home rakia for over 50 years. He is a maestro of the art of rakia making. Whether from sliva grapes, apples, cherries, melon or other fruit bases he knows the art like the back of his hand.

Talking to this man about rakia is fascinating his home has a little private kazan in an outhouse along with a grape press for wine making. His land is full of sliva and apples tree and one decare of vines in perfect order. His stock of rakia goes back the 50 years he had been making it. 2 litres are held back each year rakis is made, there are only a few years he had missed out due to being abroad for a while.

i had brugh him a bottle of last year's rakia as a present and this was where the trick he had cam into play. He shook the bottle watched the bubbles rise and told me it was 42% proof! I thought this was a fluke at the time but foudn that is wasn't when he paid a return visit to my home a few weeks later.

I have three different years of rakia line up and asked him to tell me what proof these were by shaking the bottle and watching the rate of travel bubbles rose at. I knew the alcohol content of these rakias, 41%, 45% and 48% proof respectively. He took each bottle and went through the process. His answers were almost 100% correct he just got the last one wrong but was only 1% out! Amazing!

It is a simple case of knowing that the slower the bubbles rise the higher the alcohol content, but the skill is recognising and judging the speed against the alcohol content, this comes with 50 years practice.
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