Ha! I'm in! I just have to reel in me catch now ... actually, not now, it's late and I'm off to bed.Now that wasn’t the answer I was expecting…
Dare I ask what pycnometer is?
N o o o o o o o o o o o oNow that wasn’t the answer I was expecting…
Dare I ask what pyknometer is?
).
Than? Never mind ... of course it is, it wouldn't stay in the bottom of the hole otherwise.
I was wondering how those things worked. Now I know.Pyknometers: Part 2 (only 5673 parts to go!).
Shocking. I said I'd do a proper post next day and here we are two days on and I've done ... nothing!
Let me kill off another myth
Brewers were not unable to measure the sugar content of their beer worts before the hydrometer (saccharometer) came along in the latter part of the 18th C. It was a PITA but the larger breweries would have certainly bothered to do it. The give-away is the units of measurement: "Pounds per Barrel" and the like, a density measurement involving weights and volumes, not a buoyancy measurement as would be native to a hydrometer (which works on the far more complex principal of "a solid suspended in a fluid is buoyed by a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the submerged part of the suspended solid"
And the "hydrometer" pinched the well-known known later scale used: "Specific Gravity" ... no idea what that phrase means, but it's the same as "Relative Density". Relative to ... well water of course. Weigh a sample of water, then using the same container (and therefore identical volume) weigh a sample of beer or beer wort. The unit of weight is immaterial, that's say the water weighed 5.670 "Peebees" and the wort weighed 5.897 "Peebees". Don't care about the temperature, as long as both samples are the same temperature (been hanging around in the same shed). Now divide the weight of wort with the weight of water (i.e. we'll have the weight of wort as it relates to the weight of water) ...
1.040
Remarkable! And so, we have the "Relative Density" (SG) of our wort. As a ratio (with water), at any temperature (within reason) and weighed in any units of mass (SG is a ratio and therefore has no units). So why did hydrometers become so popular? Convenience! Few had the equipment and time to weigh samples of water and wort so accurately. And so, we get the myth that brewers couldn't measure the amount of sugar in their worts. What they "couldn't" do is they "couldn't be ar***d"!
The "convenience" argument held until very recently (and I mean within the last decade). These days electronic scales have become fairly reliable ... and cheap! I don't mean the postage-stamp sized "drug-dealer" scales for a tenner or two ... they are about as reliable as the "drug-dealers"; but the "midi-sized" scales which can be easily recalibrated with calibration weights and fairly good down to one-hundredth of a gram (they have stabilising routines which do sometimes make themselves known), not perfect but quite good enough to produce SG results with four decimal places. And better things will surely come along very soon.
A little trick. Instead of weighing wort in the example above, divide the weight of water (5.670 Peebees) with itself. Any number above zero divided by itself is ... one! So, the SG of water is ... one! Or 1.000 ... exactly. Slightly confusingly, at 4°C, 1cm³ of water weighs one gram (very nearly exactly). A density of 1.000 g/cm³ (or g/ml). If working with SI measurement units and SG it's easy to get mixed up (I've been there) ... don't!
That'll do for now. The rules are simple. If I can't hear you all writhing on the floor crying out in pain as you tear your hair out ... I'll just write some more until I can.
Hang-on. Was this a subtle hint that my punctuation is dodgy? Well, it's corrected now:
I was reading up a bit on Burton and its Gypsum. And, like I do, get distracted from the key subject ... BEER!
Pyknometers: Part 2 (only 5673 parts to go!).
Shocking. I said I'd do a proper post next day and here we are two days on and I've done ... nothing!
Let me kill off another myth
Brewers were not unable to measure the sugar content of their beer worts before the hydrometer (saccharometer) came along in the latter part of the 18th C. It was a PITA but the larger breweries would have certainly bothered to do it. The give-away is the units of measurement: "Pounds per Barrel" and the like, a density measurement involving weights and volumes, not a buoyancy measurement as would be native to a hydrometer (which works on the far more complex principal of "a solid suspended in a fluid is buoyed by a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the submerged part of the suspended solid"
And the "hydrometer" pinched the well-known known later scale used: "Specific Gravity" ... no idea what that phrase means, but it's the same as "Relative Density". Relative to ... well, water of course. Weigh a sample of water, then using the same container (and therefore identical volume) weigh a sample of beer or beer wort. The unit of weight is immaterial, that's say the water weighed 5.670 "Peebees" and the wort weighed 5.897 "Peebees". Don't care about the temperature, as long as both samples are the same temperature (been hanging around in the same shed). Now divide the weight of wort with the weight of water (i.e. we'll have the weight of wort as it relates to the weight of water) ...
1.040
Remarkable! And so, we have the "Relative Density" (SG) of our wort. As a ratio (with water), at any temperature (within reason) and weighed in any units of mass (SG is a ratio and therefore has no units). So why did hydrometers become so popular? Convenience! Few had the equipment and time to weigh samples of water and wort so accurately. And so, we get the myth that brewers couldn't measure the amount of sugar in their worts. What they "couldn't" do is they "couldn't be ar***d"!
The "convenience" argument held until very recently (and I mean within the last decade). These days electronic scales have become fairly reliable ... and cheap! I don't mean the postage-stamp sized "drug-dealer" scales for a tenner or two ... they are about as reliable as the "drug-dealers"; but the "midi-sized" scales which can be easily recalibrated with calibration weights and fairly good down to one-hundredth of a gram (they have stabilising routines which do sometimes make themselves known), not perfect but quite good enough to produce SG results with four decimal places. And better things will surely come along very soon.
A little trick. Instead of weighing wort in the example above, divide the weight of water (5.670 Peebees) with itself. Any number above zero divided by itself is ... one! So, the SG of water is ... one! Or 1.000 ... exactly. Slightly confusingly, at 4°C, 1cm³ of water weighs one gram (very nearly exactly). A density of 1.000 g/cm³ (or g/ml). If working with SI measurement units and SG it's easy to get mixed up (I've been there) ... don't!
That'll do for now. The rules are simple. If I can't hear you all writhing on the floor crying out in pain as you tear your hair out ... I'll just write some more until I can.
