1843
Balling Introduces His Saccharometric Scale and Tables
In 1843, Karl Josef Napoleon Balling, a professor at the Prague Polytechnic, established tables relating the density of sucrose solutions to their sugar concentration by weight. His saccharometric system gave brewers a practical way to estimate the dissolved extract in wort from a density measurement. Wort contains other dissolved substances as well as sugars, so the measurement is not simply a direct sugar analysis. Balling's wider work connected original extract, apparent and real extract after fermentation, and alcohol content, helping develop systematic beer analysis. His tables were subsequently refined in the development of the Plato scale. Saccharometers already existed before Balling's work: the Science Museum Group holds a Richardson instrument dated 1780–1790. Balling's contribution was his particular scale, tables, and analytical system.
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Sources
These sources support the dating and historical claims in this entry.
Basařová, Gabriela. "Professor at the Prague Polytechnic Carl Joseph Napoleon Balling (1805–1868)." Kvasný průmysl 51, no. 4 (2005): 130–135.
Philliskirk, George. "Balling Scale." The Oxford Companion to Beer, edited by Garrett Oliver.
Science Museum Group. "Brass Richardson's saccharometer by J. and E. Troughton." Object 1954-381; dated 1780–1790.
Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon. "Balling, Karl Josef Napoleon."
Krennmair, Andreas. "The Battle of the Beer Analysis Methods." July 24, 2022.
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