How to use an alcoholmeter correctly and how to choose one

Before you figure out once and for all how to use an alcoholmeter correctly, you should figure out what kind of device it is and WHAT exactly it measures. So, alcohol meters are special hydrometers designed to determine the alcohol content in a drink. Everything is elementary – you immerse a measuring device containing a load of a certain mass into a liquid. The device pushes out part of the liquid, floating above the surface to the division that corresponds to its “degrees” – the law of Archimedes, cho.

BUT. Alcoholometers are calibrated in the manufacturing process in a water-alcohol mixture and are able to accurately determine the strength of alcohol ONLY if the latter consists exclusively of alcohol and water. I repeat – not from sugar, fruit juices drawn from berries, fermented must (there are separate vinometers for wines, we will talk about them below), but only and exclusively from alcohol and water. Any additive, even a minor one – for example, essential oils in distilled sambuca or absinthe, has an unpredictable effect on measurements, as the density of the substance increases – the device shows fewer degrees than it actually is.

To the nearest degree, never. But fortunately, we are not Medeleev professors writing dissertations on metrology, but home-made moonshine winemakers, for whom, first of all, the taste and organoleptic characteristics of the drink are important. In other words, if we are talking about the strength of tincture-liquor-liquor, approximate, calculated data will be quite enough. So you need to focus on your own calculations and feelings – you want it to be less strong, just add water, what’s wrong with that? Just do not forget to give such a drink an additional rest for a couple of weeks before drinking.

However, there is a special type of alcohol meters, which are called “optical”. These are complex and expensive devices, most often with a limited range of measurements (usually 0-40 ° or slightly higher), but they can determine both the amount of alcohol and the amount of sugar in a drink. But experienced winemakers say that everything is not clean here either. Say, an optical alcoholmeter accurately measures only liquids consisting of water, alcohol and sugar, and other impurities seriously reduce the adequacy of measurements. In general, the same troubles, only in profile.

The density of the finished product is calculated based on the ingredients that make up its composition. For example, you prepared galangal using a liter of 70-degree alcohol. Suppose the dried root of a degree almost did not steal. Then they diluted the tincture with half a liter of water – the fortress came out about 46-47 degrees. And then they sweetened it with a syrup of 100 ml of water and 100 ml of sugar – the fortress fell another three degrees from the water, the sugar “ate” about the same amount – after all, the volume of the drink increased. The estimated strength of the drink is 40-41 degrees. Things are much more complicated with tinctures on berries – dried ones actively absorb alcohol, fresh ones contain a lot of water, reducing the alcohol strength by an average of 10-15, or even more percent, depending on the juiciness and structure of the fruit. In general, the devil will break his leg.

Conventional alcohol meters are not suitable for measuring the strength of wines. That is, from the word in general. The good news is that other metrological instruments are being produced for this purpose – vinometers / sugar meters. The bad news is that it’s not easy for them either. These devices often have two scales – the content of alcohol and sugar. They are able to quite accurately determine the degree in dry grape wine, fully clarified and made according to technology. If the wine was made, roughly speaking, on the knee, with the addition of water and sugar, from fruits that differ from grapes in acidity, density, juice structure (raspberries, currants, apples), the winemaker can show the temperature of the water on Mars instead of its real strength.

But the scale of sugar content is useful to us, but again – we have to count. First you need to take the still not fermenting wort and measure its sugar content. Let’s say the sugar content was 25 g / l. Now we measure the same parameter after the wine has completely fermented and clarified – before pouring it into bottles. Suppose the value drops to 5 g / l, the rest is non-fermentable sugars and by-products. Given that about 0.470 liters of alcohol is obtained from a kilogram of sugar, and each liter of wine fermented 20 grams of sugar, we get (20 * 0,47 u9.4d XNUMX%). Even if the sugar meter made a mistake in absolute values ​​due to inappropriate density, it will still determine the difference quite accurately.

I already talked about another interesting way to measure the alcohol content of wine in my previous analysis of fortifying homemade wines. In short – a small part of the fermented wine can simply be distilled, and then the strength of the distillate can be measured using a conventional alcohol meter. For example, from a liter of wine we got 300 ml of 50-degree moonshine, which corresponds to approximately 150 ml of absolute alcohol, that is, there were 15 degrees in wine.

Well, of course! The warmer – the less dense the distillate, which means – the more degrees the alcoholmeter will show. The error can be quite high – for example, in reality, moonshine has 90 °, and you drive in a small kitchen, and even in summer, everything is on fire, the ambient temperature has reached 40 – and the alcohol meter showed you all 95 degrees. Of course, it is difficult to achieve 20 ° C indoors – it is much easier to take a thermometer and make a correction for the temperature using one of the moonshiner’s calculators or the table below (open in a new tab, a large table).

If you are a happy owner of a high-quality alcohol meter, there are no particular difficulties in using it. Complete with the device itself, you will also need a transparent cylinder of small capacity – 100 ml will be enough not to plop the hydrometer into a jar of moonshine. Also, a thermometer will not hurt – those that have an external probe are especially good, but any other will do – to make a correction for temperature.

Pour a water-alcohol solution or moonshine into the cylinder, lower the alcoholometer into it – you can give it a slight rotation with your fingers to get rid of the bubbles. We wait until the device is leveled and look at what mark it stopped. If the “float” sank, it means it is pecking! That is, alcohol is too strong, you need to take an alcohol meter designed for a higher degree. If, on the contrary, it floats on the surface, like a dry log, alcohol contains too few revolutions and we need a less high-degree device.

Yes, I completely forgot. When the hydrometer is lowered into a liquid, a meniscus forms around the device – a kind of funnel, on the contrary, due to the surface tension of the liquid. Some models are designed to take readings along the bottom edge of this “collar”, and some – along the top. This nuance must be indicated in the instructions.

I will say right away: if you only have a glass spirit meter, throw it away and get at least a decent household one, otherwise there will be no question of any measurement accuracy! But even household ones most often do not differ in high reliability, because they are done in a blunder – that’s why they cost a penny. In my personal opinion (and in this matter it completely coincides with the opinion of most experienced moonshiners), ASP-3 alcohol meters should be purchased – their set includes three devices in the ranges of 0-40 °, 40-70 ° and 70-100 °, the division price is one degree. You can buy such a kit either on the Internet or in a specialized measuring equipment store – in the latter case, it is more likely that the alcoholmeter will be clearly calibrated in accordance with GOST standards.

In addition to ASP-3, there are also more accurate hydrometers – for example, ASP-1, of which 11 pieces are included in the kit, or ASP-2 – as many as 18 alcohol meters at once, with a division value of 0.1 degrees. But practice shows that this is already too much, and there is enough fuss with three devices. There is also a laboratory hydrometer ASP-T, which is able to measure both degrees and temperature at the same time – a great option if you do not have a reliable electronic thermometer. There are two last ones in the set – for 0-60 and 60-100 revolutions.

In addition to conventional alcohol meters, there are more advanced models, for example, optical ones (refractometers – прим. ред.), which I already mentioned – expensive and needing tricky calibration, but capable of measuring the strength of even wine or liquor. As far as I know, electronic hydrometers capable of showing the degree in an already finished product are not produced – they measure the strength only in the tank or in the cooler of a working apparatus, based on a complex algorithm, they are mainly used not for distillation, but for vacuum rectification. An example is an alcoholometer / thermometer ETS -223.