Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report

Cider Digest #0259

eZine's profile picture
Published in 
Cider Digest
 · 8 months ago

Subject: Re: potential alcohol 
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1993 18:19:11 EST
From: Jay Hersh <hersh@expo.lcs.mit.edu>


>> Be aware that a dry cider will often have a
>> finishing gravity under 1.000, that is completely dry with no residual
>> sugar
>
>This is not strictly accurate. Pure ethanol has a gravity somewhere in the
>.800's, so a strong dry cider could read under 1.000 and still have some
>residual sugar (cf long meads, which can taste sweet even after finishing
>at .990 or below).


Taking this rain of thought a step further, this is why there are 2
ways to measure attenuation, real attenuation and apparent attenuation.

Apparent attenuation is simply the differenc between original and final
gravity readings. This is of course, as pointed out above, skewed since
alcohol is less dense than water and the conversion of sugar to alcohol
and CO2 causes the alcohol to mix with water in the beverage thus
lowering the gravity.

This is of course important in the case of high alcohol drinks like cider
or mead. I should have thought to point this out earlier in my post
on potential alcohol readings. This is why it is called potential
alcohol, since it is not definitive (BTW my numbers were wrong, double
checking shows the figure to be about 7.5 points of gravity per percent
alcohol, and I believe that is w/w not v/v)

So to calculate real attenuation brewers heat the post ferment brew
at the boiling temp of alcohol to drive off all the alcohol. This leaves
a solution with only water and sugar. Now the difference between gravity
of this mixture and the original mixture tells the actual amount of
sugars fermented, and can thus be used to calculate the exact alcohol
yield (ie the final reading is no longer offset by the density dilution
of the alcohol).

This technique is probably much better suited to mead and cider makers
since they will tend to have more alcohol and so the potential alcohol
readings off your normal hydrometer are likely to be less acurate.
I should have recalled this earlier, but recent study for the Beer
Judge Certification Program refreshed my memory on this topic...


JaH

------------------------------

← previous
next →
loading
sending ...
New to Neperos ? Sign Up for free
download Neperos App from Google Play
install Neperos as PWA

Let's discover also

Recent Articles

Recent Comments

Neperos cookies
This website uses cookies to store your preferences and improve the service. Cookies authorization will allow me and / or my partners to process personal data such as browsing behaviour.

By pressing OK you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge the Privacy Policy

By pressing REJECT you will be able to continue to use Neperos (like read articles or write comments) but some important cookies will not be set. This may affect certain features and functions of the platform.
OK
REJECT