The alcohol content of an elixir was usually below 25%. In a sense, Two-Eared Grass Mead with its 23% alcohol content was also an elixir. People simply did not want medicine to ruin the flavor and fragrance of the mead brewed by wildflower fairies.
Compared with that expensive mead, Baruffio's Brain Elixir was much more accessible to students. It could be bought on the "black market" before exams every year, though the vast majority were counterfeits filled with other ingredients.
"Wit-Sharpening Potion," "Talent Potion," "Wisdom Draught"—as long as something was said to be "effective," people would buy it. It did not matter how long it lasted, so long as it got them through the exams.
Talent Potion enhanced a person's reflexes. In social settings, people often cared more about whether one could answer questions cleverly and gracefully. Drinking it could turn someone poor with words into the center of attention in social circles.
Brewing Talent Potion required firefly essence, as though wit, too, flickered briefly before vanishing. Like Dream Potion, it also had to be cooled.
The English word for ammonia was "ammonia." Ammonia gas itself was not particularly reactive, but things changed when it mixed with air. At concentrations of 16% to 25%, it could explode.
Ammonium salts decomposed easily when heated, releasing ammonia gas. But sal ammoniac was not an ammonium salt as defined by Muggle chemistry.
It was a kind of "Elixir of Life" popular among sixteenth-century alchemists, made by mixing ammonium chloride, salt, urine, vinegar, and sulfur from active volcanoes in certain proportions. Like ammonium salts, it also decomposed when heated.
After Kingsley left, Pomona felt it was possible that she had gotten the potion recipe wrong, rather than the recipe itself being wrong. After all, the book had been written before Lavoisier separated alchemy from