VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
Link to Florence Ryan’s YouTube video about cycling in Ethiopia:
🔍 Dive deep into the history behind a single, powerful word that connects 16th-century tax collectors, British Navy sailors, and modern-day backpackers facing a timeless traveler’s dilemma: “Can I trust this drink?”
In this episode of Planet Doug, I unravel the fascinating story of the word “proof”—from its origins in alcohol taxation and the Royal Navy’s gunpowder test to its crucial role for travelers today. It all started while watching a travel vlog by cyclist Florence Ryan, who found herself sheltering from a storm in an Ethiopian village, hesitating over a glass of local moonshine. That moment of uncertainty—something every traveler has faced—sent me down a historical rabbit hole.
🌍 What You’ll Discover in This Video:
🚲 The Traveler’s Dilemma: Why accepting drinks from strangers—whether in Ethiopia, Laos, or elsewhere—requires a rapid calculation of trust, safety, and proof.
☕ Cultural Rituals & Risks: From Ethiopia’s sacred coffee ceremony to the honey wine tej and potent local spirits—what to consider before you say “yes.”
⚖️ The Birth of “Proof”: How 16th-century English tax inspectors used fire to test alcohol strength—and set the stage for centuries of regulation.
💥 The Navy’s Gunpowder Test: How British sailors mixed rum with gunpowder to expose watered-down rations—and why “Navy strength” rum still hovers around 57% ABV.
🥃 From “Proof” to “Groggy”: The surprising naval origins of the word “groggy”—and why the daily rum ration lasted an astonishing 300 years, ending only in 1970 on Black Tot Day.
🤝 Alcohol as Diplomacy: How sharing a drink has always been a ritual of trust—from ship decks to remote villages—and how modern travelers can navigate these invitations wisely.
📚 Perfect for history buffs, travelers, cyclists, backpackers, and anyone curious about the hidden stories behind everyday words. Whether you’ve nervously sipped moonshine in a foreign country or just love a good historical tangent, this story ties together culture, chemistry, and human connection across centuries.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning and welcome back to Planet Doug. And this morning I have a story to tell. It all started the other day when I was watching a YouTube travel video. And there was something in the video that got me thinking about a certain topic, a certain word in particular. And that sent me down a rabbit hole. And it was a fascinating rabbit hole that involved history, the British Royal Navy, alcohol, gunpowder, the whole concept of trust and proof. And in my mind, it all connected with the modern world of backpacking, motorcycle cycling, cycling around the world, with the world of travelers. And I thought I would take you down that rabbit hole with me today.
The YouTube video in question was made by a woman named Florence Ryan. That’s also the name of her YouTube channel. And she was in the middle of a cycling trip through Africa. The classic Cairo to Cape Town journey. And in this video, she was in Ethiopia. She was cycling with two companions, two guys. So it was Florence and these two guys going through Ethiopia on their bicycles. And they’re way out in the countryside in the northern highlands of Ethiopia. Stunning area. I’ve been there myself on a bicycle, which is one reason why this video and this topic resonated so strongly with me.
So, they were out there cycling in the hills in the mountains and they saw a big storm moving in, a rainstorm, and they were looking for shelter. And then some local people in this village in this small town at the side of the road invited them to take shelter with them. So they put their bicycles in this shed and then they went into this small house owned by the family. Mud walls, the typical village setting that you might be picturing in your mind.
And as often happens with these places, the family had converted one of their rooms like the front living room into a kind of cafe or restaurant and they served the local alcoholic drink. Right? So I’m not talking about store-bought whiskey or anything like that. This is the local moonshine that they make in Ethiopia out of corn and other grains. I’ve had this drink myself many times and they make it with different grains and in different ways all across Ethiopia.
So, they’re invited into this family’s home and they settle down in this area and then there’s like, “Oh, would you like a drink?” And as I said, it’s an alcoholic drink. And they pour it out of this metal kettle with a long thin tube into clear glass shot glasses. And it was such a familiar scene to me. It just got my wheels turning.
And I noticed right from the gate there was a certain hesitation. Right? You’re out there in the world in a country where you’re a stranger. Everyone around you is a stranger. You don’t know the language or the customs and you’re invited to join a group of people for a drink and eventually your wheels start turning. It’s like, “Oh, can I trust these people? What is going on?”
And every traveler, every backpacker, anyone traveling around the world has been in this situation many, many times, if not dozens of times. And you immediately do this mental check of what’s going on. Am I safe here? Can I trust what’s happening?
And Ethiopia is a very good example for that. Not just because of this alcoholic drink, but also because in Ethiopia they have the coffee ceremony. It’s a big part of the culture in Ethiopia, particularly in the northern highlands and they call coffee there buna and the coffee ceremony is something that the family does themselves quite often. Every afternoon people gather around, sit on the ground and they make coffee.
And if you’re a traveler in Ethiopia, I guarantee you are going to be invited to join the family for their coffee ceremony. And it’s a wonderful thing to take part in. They roast the beans on a fire. You smell the roasting coffee beans. They grind the beans. They make the coffee. And yeah, it’s a wonderful thing to be a part of.
But when you’re in Addis Ababa and back in those days, when I went to Ethiopia, this was sort of pre-internet. So everybody had Lonely Planet guide books back in those days. And then when you read the warning sections in the guide book, it will tell you be careful when you’re in Addis. And if people invite you to join them for the coffee ceremony, well, they might bring you to a place, treat you like a friend, welcome you into their home, and you’re amongst friends and you’re having coffee and then at the end of it, they present you with a huge bill.
So, in fact, it was a performance and you are now expected to pay a lot of money for the coffee that you’ve drunk. And this is like a local scam that they would pull on foreigners, in particular, on tourists. Of course, that doesn’t happen to you out in the countryside. So, you don’t have to worry about that.
I only mention it to bring up this idea of being invited into a group to partake in the social ritual. If you refuse, you’re an outsider. But if you say, “Oh, that sounds great. I will join you.” Now, you’re part of the inner group. And that’s a wonderful thing. But you have to make a judgment call about the situation and that is doubly or many more times important when you’re talking about the local alcohol.
So you automatically do a mental calculation. You’re looking at the people like do these look like trustworthy people? Quite often if you’re in a village and it’s a group of men gathered under a tree and they’re all drinking and they’re all drunk and they invite you to join them, you’re like, “Ah, no, that doesn’t look like a good situation to get involved in.” And you say, “No, thank you. No, thank you.”
But for Florence Ryan, she was being invited into a family’s home to take shelter from a storm. And then you can look around the group of people and you can say, “Oh, who’s taking part in this? Oh, it’s a family. There’s the grandfather, the grandmother, mother, brothers, sisters, uncles, children.” And you can say, “Well, who else is drinking?” Like, “Oh, the father is drinking. The brother-in-law, he’s having a little drink. Everything here looks cool.”
It’s not like they’re going to drug you and then rob you while you’re drunk or they’re not going to get you so drunk that you lose your judgment and then they can more easily rob you or something like that. It looks like a safe situation.
And there’s also the question of hygiene because the alcohol is not coming out of a factory sealed bottle, right? It’s something that they make themselves locally. They have their own rough village distillery where they make their own moonshine essentially. And then you have to wonder, well, is it safe to drink? Am I going to get sick to my stomach from bacteria? That sort of thing.
So you make that judgment call. And with alcohol, there’s also a very serious concern about poisoning, unintentional poisoning from methanol. And you hear stories about this quite a bit. There’s been some very high-profile cases in Laos in the last few years where a fair number of foreign backpackers were poisoned by methanol from the local drinks.
So when it comes to local alcohol being brewed, being distilled in the village, you also have to take that into account. Can I trust their skill at making this alcohol?
So all of these judgments come in. What is happening here? Can I trust these people? And you’re looking for proof that this is a safe situation. And proof is the word that hooked me because when you talk about alcohol, how strong it is, historically we use the word proof. This word has gone out of fashion around the world, but in the United States, they still use it.
This idea of proof and when I was growing up in Canada, it’s a word that I’m very familiar with. You talk about whiskey, gin, or vodka, and you might say, “Ooh, it’s 100 proof.” And 100 proof means it has a very high alcohol content. In the United States, 100 proof means it is 50% alcohol by volume, ABV. If it’s 80 proof, it’s 40% alcohol. 70 proof is 35% alcohol.
And that word proof is the link between the history of alcohol and modern backpackers.
So, Florence Ryan and her two companions are in this room and they’re pouring out this clear white liquid. It looks just like water. And they’re talking about how strong it is. That’s a big part of this. It’s almost like a ritual. The local people, they pour you this drink and then the men hand it to you and they’re all kind of like waiting for you to react because they know how strong this liquor is. And you know, we are real men. We drink this strong liquor, but you weak foreigners, you probably can’t handle it. And they’re waiting to get your reaction.
And then, of course, the foreigner takes a drink. And you know, they start sputtering and coughing as it burns as it goes down. And then the conversation goes to, well, how strong is this alcohol? And then you get into the word proof.
So Florence Ryan and her companions, they were talking about it. Wow, this is so strong. And one of the guys says, “Yeah, to me it’s 50% alcohol.” And then they turn to the villagers. And the villagers at first confirmed, “Oh, no, that’s 50% alcohol. It’s very, very strong.” And then they take another drink and it’s like, “Oh, it’s so strong. It must be stronger.” And they talk to the Ethiopian hosts and then they say, “No, no, no, it’s not 50%. It’s 75%.”
So then they’re like, “Oh, that makes sense because it tastes so strong. It must be at least 75% alcohol, which would be 150 proof.” And to be honest, that is pretty much impossible based on my experience with this topic. To get your locally brewed, your locally distilled alcohol to 75% alcohol by volume, it’s really impossible to get it. That’s like double distilled. Takes a great deal of skill and technology to get an alcohol to that level. 50% alcohol by volume is hard to reach and keep it drinkable.
So what usually happens in these situations is that the locally made alcohol is not pure. It’s not as pure as what you would buy in a store from a professional distillery. So there are contaminants in it and it’s those contaminants that make it taste so strong. So when it’s burning as it goes down your throat, that’s not because it’s got such a high alcohol content. It’s actually because of the contaminants in the drink and it burns on its way down.
Everybody goes, “Oh, see how strong our alcohol is because it’s, you know, 75% or something like that.” When in reality I think this locally made drink in Ethiopia it’s probably hovering around 35 maybe 40% alcohol by volume so it would be like 80 proof 70 proof.
So anyway that’s what was going on in this video and Florence herself she even she was aware of this idea of trust because when you look at her chapter titles for the video. This segment she called it accepting alcohol from strangers… So she put in that word strangers accepting and then put in an ellipsis very deliberately because she’s referring to ooh is this a safe situation? Is it safe to accept alcohol from strangers?
And that is a classic traveler’s dilemma. You make that judgment call all the time. And in fact, when you’re in Ethiopia, there’s a third level to this. I mentioned the coffee ceremony and the risk of being invited to take part in that by scammers. And then there’s this distilled alcohol that you find in the villages. Can you trust the hygiene and the skill? Is there methanol? Is it poisoned with methanol by accident?
But then there’s also a drink there, a honey wine called tej. And a honey wine and a beer is a little bit different because they are made differently from this distilled alcohol and there isn’t the danger of methanol. So you can drink honey wine. It’s a gorgeous, gorgeous drink. Go on to YouTube, type in Ethiopia and tej, and you’ll see this gorgeous thick yellow honey wine that they make in Ethiopia called tej. And it’s served in bottles almost like test tube flasks, narrow neck with a bulging bottom, and it’s all clear glass. And you can see this amazing yellow honey wine on the inside. That’s an incredible drink and I had that all over Ethiopia as well.
And it made me very very sick to my stomach from time to time, but you don’t have to worry about getting too drunk with that because it has a lower alcohol by volume. It’s not it’s lower proof and it can’t have methanol in it because of the fermentation process.
But Florence Ryan, she hinted at this problem because of her title, accepting alcohol from strangers… And then during that segment of the video, she put in a caption, like a disclaimer that says, you know, we’re doing this, but be careful. Maybe you shouldn’t really accept alcohol from strangers when you’re out here doing this. Like they’re basically putting in a disclaimer like, “Okay, we’re doing this, but we’ve judged the risks and we think it’s okay, but as a rule, you probably shouldn’t do this yourself.”
So, be careful when you’re out there traveling. Look for proof that it is safe.
Anyway, this word proof lodged in my brain. And of course, I know that 100 proof is 50% alcohol. As I talked about, this is a historic term, and that’s the rabbit hole I went down next because you’ve got travelers looking for proof that the situation is safe. And they’re drinking a drink and they’re asking themselves, “What is the proof? Is it 100 proof? Is it 40 proof? And where did this word come from? What is the history of the word proof as it relates to alcohol?
Now, to get the history of the word proof, you have to go all the way back to the 16th century in England. And it’s all about taxation at that time because the government wanted to tax alcohol. And they wanted to tax it at different levels based on how strong the alcohol was. And how do you make that decision?
And what they did back in those days was they set the alcohol on fire, right? ‘Cause we know alcohol burns, but only a drink with a high alcohol content will actually burn. So they’re trying to decide got all these barrels of alcohol. What should we tax them? Then they take some of that alcohol, pour it into a dish, and then they light it on fire. And if it sets on fire, that is the proof that it is high alcohol content and then they apply a higher taxation level.
There’s nothing about trust going on here except maybe the people who made this alcohol, they might be claiming, “No, no, no, no, no. It’s not strong at all and we should get a lower taxation rate.” And then the government inspectors go, “Well, let’s put some in a dish.” And they’re testing it. Can we trust what this seller is telling us? And they light it on fire and ah, there’s the proof that this is a high alcohol content beverage. It’s burning. So then they apply the appropriate taxation rate.
But the more interesting part of the story takes place a little bit later on. Now we jump ahead to perhaps the 17th century, the British Royal Navy. And I think a lot of people are aware of this. It’s a famous part of the history of the British Royal Navy that the sailors would get a daily ration of rum that they called a tot.
And back in those days, of course, these ships that were sailing around the world would be out there on the ocean for months and there was a real risk of the sailors becoming discontent and starting a mutiny, right? So, they’re trying to keep the sailors happy. And of course, they’re paying the sailors a salary, but of course, it would be very low in those days. And where are they going to be able to spend it? They’re out on the ocean for months at a time.
So they developed the system where every day they got a cup, a certain volume of rum that they called a tot. And that would keep the sailors happy. Every day I think it was usually around noon, there would be like a pipe sound, a up drinks melody would ring out over the ship and all the sailors would line up and get their tot of rum for the day. And that kept the sailors very very happy of course and they would want to get their daily ration of rum.
But there was a problem in the system because they were out on the ocean for so many months. They would have barrels and barrels and barrels of this potent rum in the hold of the ship. And the purser was in charge of all the supplies on board the ship. And the sailors would start to think, well, can we trust this purser because rum was very valuable. And who knows, the purser would be going down there and he’s stealing gallons of this rum and selling it, making money on the side. And to hide what he did, he would add water to the rum barrels. So he would be watering down the rum a bit by bit by bit. And then the sailors were being cheated because they weren’t getting the good stuff anymore. They were being given tots consisting of watered down rum.
So even if the purser was honest, the sailors didn’t really know. So they wanted evidence that they could trust the purser and that the rum that they were getting was the good stuff. They wanted proof.
Just like travelers needed proof that they could trust the people serving them drinks, these sailors wanted proof that they could trust the purser. And they developed their own special test, which is the fascinating part of this story. Took me a long time to get to this point, but I hope you hung with me to get here.
What the sailors developed was the gunpowder test. And they would take a little bit of gunpowder, mix it with a little bit of the rum, put it together to make a kind of paste, and then they would try to set it on fire, just like the old taxation test. But in this case, if the gunpowder burst into flames, if the gunpowder exploded, that was proof that this was high quality rum. It hadn’t been watered down.
And this happened because of the chemistry of gunpowder and ethanol, that the oxidizer in gunpowder was highly soluble in water, but not in alcohol. So, if you mix gunpowder with water, the gunpowder dissolves into the water and then it won’t explode anymore. But if you mix it with alcohol, it doesn’t get absorbed as much. It doesn’t dissolve as much into the alcohol and the gunpowder would still fire. It would still burst into flames and explode.
And over testing over the years, they discovered that if you added the rum, any alcohol to gunpowder and then you mixed it and it still exploded, it burst into flames, it had an alcohol volume of 57.15% alcohol. So at 57.15% and above, it would burst into flames. And that was your proof that this was the good stuff. It hadn’t been watered down.
If the purser had watered down the rum, it drops below 57% alcohol and then it wouldn’t burn anymore and the sailors knew that they were being cheated.
I find that connection with the sailors in the British Royal Navy with modern-day backpackers and travelers kind of a fascinating one because just the language and the concepts are in such parallel that the sailors would apply the gunpowder test and then it was almost like a ritual with all the other sailors. They would gather around and then with the purser and the captain maybe, I don’t know exactly how it worked, but then they would prove to the sailors that they were not being cheated and they light the rum soaked gunpowder and then if it bursts into flame, it’s proof. But if it doesn’t, then that alcohol is considered to be underproof.
And the proof level was 57.15% alcohol. Today in the United States, they actually simplified it. So proof is actually 57% alcohol. That was the official above proof number that the rum had to hit. But the United States decided to simplify it for taxation purposes again. And they decided to make it a simple divide by two. So in the old days, 100 proof was 57% alcohol by volume in the United States and today 100 proof is 50%. So you divide the proof number by two to get the percentage of alcohol. 100 proof is 50%. 80 proof is 40% etc.
But you do see some rum out there. I think it might even have the name Navy strength rum. And that rum is stronger because it holds to the old British Navy standards. And that rum, if it’s 100 proof, it’s actually 57% alcohol because they hold to the old standards, not to the modern American one where you divide it by two.
So above proof, you’ve got the proof, the evidence that you’re drinking the good stuff for Navy Strength is 57%. But in the modern world now, it’s 50% alcohol by volume. That is your proof that you’re drinking the good stuff. And yeah, you’re not being cheated.
And there was, by the way, a practical reason for the old gunpowder test, not just the sailor’s desire to get good, high-quality rum. This idea that gunpowder still explodes at 57% alcohol volume meant that their gunpowder was safe even if it gets soaked in rum. Because this is the legend I’ve heard. To be honest, I don’t know if historically this really had a big role in the history, but I do like the idea that all the barrels of gunpowder were kept in the hold of the ship right beside all the barrels of rum. And if they were in high seas and the barrels of rum tipped over and broke open and the gunpowder got soaked in this rum, as long as the rum was at 57.15% alcohol, the gunpowder would still explode. So they could still use the gunpowder in their cannons and in their guns and they could still fire and defend themselves.
But if the purser and other people, you know, officers on the ship were sneaking rum out of the barrels and diluting it, then if that rum that is underproof spills and gets into the gunpowder, the gunpowder won’t fire anymore. And now the ship is defenseless.
So, it was in everybody’s best interest to conduct the gunpowder test with the rum and make sure that the alcohol content of the rum stayed at 57%. The sailors enjoyed their daily tot rum more because it was more potent and they knew their cannons and their guns were still going to fire and they weren’t defenseless.
There are a couple of other fascinating stories connected to this history. And this first one connects again with a little bit of interesting English vocabulary. There was a British admiral, Admiral Edward Vernon, I think in 1740. He got a little bit impatient with his sailors because he thought they were getting too drunk on their daily tot. And he was a disciplinarian and he didn’t like this.
So in 1740 this admiral he said okay we’re going to make the rum less strong. So he set it as a policy that the rum was no longer going to be above proof. They were going to dilute it with water, make it less potent, and they’re going to add lemon to it to combat scurvy so that the sailors would not be as drunk when they’re on duty.
And of course, the sailors were not very happy about this. And they came up with a name for this new rum, the diluted watered down rum. They called it grog because this admiral he used to wear this silk wool garment made out of grogram. I guess I think that was the name of this material. And he had the nickname old grog because of the clothing that he wore. And then when he said that all the rum had to be diluted, this new diluted rum, the sailors dismissed it. They called it grog. This terrible stuff they called grog after the nickname of the admiral.
And then today if somebody is a little bit drunk or a little bit out of it, we say that they are groggy. And that’s where the English word groggy comes from. It’s like, oh, I’m feeling groggy. It’s because you’ve had some of this light rum to drink that dates all the way back to 1740.
And the other interesting little factoid that I came across was that this rum ration in the British Royal Navy, you’d think it would just be a flash in the pan, something that happened back in the 1700s for a short amount of time, but no. This tradition lasted in the British Royal Navy for 300 years all the way through World War I and even through World War II. In fact, this tradition of sailors getting a daily tot of rum continued all the way up until 1970. In fact, on July 31st, 1970 was the last day they ever issued the daily tot of rum to all the sailors.
And they have a name for that. I think it’s called Black Tot Day. And on that day, the sailors treated it like a funeral. They wore black armbands. And it was the last day of the tot rum ration. And yeah, they commemorated it as a funeral. July 31st, 1970.
And of course, the fact that they ended this tradition makes sense because navy ships were no longer wooden ships with cloth sails. Modern Navy ships are very highly technical with so much electronics and computerized gear. You can’t have sailors even a little bit tipsy. You can’t have them even a little bit groggy and operating a modern sophisticated Navy vessel. So, the daily rum ration finally had to come to an end on Black Tot Day.
Well, I hope you enjoyed going down that particular history traveling English language rabbit hole with me. That story brought together so many of my own personal interests. And I love this idea that this tradition is like a social ritual. It’s almost like alcohol diplomacy where Navy sailors would get together to perform the gunpowder test and it was like a social ritual, a bonding on deck amongst all the sailors that they could trust each other.
And of course, historically, alcohol has been a tool of diplomacy. You get together with your enemies, with your friends, and you share a drink. And that idea of trust and proof obviously carries over to the modern day, particularly for travelers who go to other countries. And having a drink with strangers, as Florence Ryan pointed out, accepting alcohol from strangers, is part of the social fabric of being on the road today, being invited by local families, by people that you meet on the road to join them for a meal, for a coffee ceremony, for a glass of tej honey wine, or as in this case, a glass of the local distilled alcohol. That 100 proof alcohol.
And all of these people throughout history dating all the way back to the 1600s, tax collectors for 300 years of Navy sailors all the way up until modern travelers and backpackers and cyclists. They’re all looking for that proof, the proof that they can trust the people they’re with and they can trust the food and the drinks that they’re consuming with their new friends.