Questionable listed ABV

Its only required in certain states, or if you're distributing to other states. 450 just took the abv off their cans as a solution

 

The TTB regulates alcoholic beverages in the US (for most aspects, the FDA is not involved). The TTB have an Alcohol Beverage Sampling Program which they describe as "a random survey of products in the marketplace" to:

In 2016* they checked a laughable 53 beers (some of these 10k bbl. breweries put out more beers than that in a year) and found more than half were wrong as far as the voluntary listing of ABV:

Although the over/under of the allowable tolerance (± 0.3%) was much less the OP's example:

* Why so old? "Starting with the 2017 sampling program, we will no longer report the results of our analysis on an annual basis."

I guess the brewery hopes you don't file a consumer complaint with the TTB.

Yeah, that's gonna work...

It's the 21st century. Who'ya gonna trust - the (barely) regulated TTB-approved label or a consumer-sourced beer website?

 

I thought they were tested and held to a +- standard of the labeled abv something like +-.2 or so. It’s been a long time but there was a thread years ago that had some details, my recollection isn’t so great.

 

I believe you're right about them not having to be precise and some deviation is allowed. Probably not by 2 points but more like 1/1,5

 

As noted above, in the US for brewers who voluntarily choose (below: "may" not "must" or "shall") to put the ABV on the label:

But there is no mandatory universal "testing" on the Federal level.

 

Not sure if it easy to see the decimal point from the above, but the can is listed at 5%, so the contents would have to be something like 4.8 to 5.2. I’m sure Jess knows the ins and outs of this. I have a vague recollection, but there’s has to be some deviation.

 

Larger craft breweries have lab equipment that measures ABV very accurately. It is expensive, so smaller ones without a lab don't have one.

Beers can be sent to independent labs for tests, but that costs some money too.