.. So - if someone has a suitable formula,
> it should be no problem converting it to a table.
>
> Frederick
Of course. No such table exists. And those who attempted to make
one soon discovered that their formula/method doesn't work. Let me
try (yet again) to explain this.
Example: Start a wine at 1.090. It finishes dry at 0.990. This is 100
points of SG drop. 90 of those points are due to the consumption and
conversion of sugar, and the other 10 points are attributable to the fact
that alcohol is less dense than water and therefore has an effect on our
*post ferment* reading (that was not present when we took our original
gravity reading). This 10 point drop contributed *nothing* toward the
amount of alcohol in the wine !!
Anyone who owns a triple scale hydrometer can do the following to
prove this to themselves:
Assemble the following materials:
1. Distilled water
2. Table sugar (pure cane)
3. Pure alcohol (Everclear will do)
Mix up the following solutions, measure and record the SG for each:
1. Plain water.
2. A 12% solution of alcohol and water.
3. A 22% solution of sugar and water.
4. A solution which contains BOTH 22% sugar AND 12% alcohol
with the remainder being water.
The first solution (plain water) is the reference point when we take our
original gravity readings.
The second solution is the reference point when we take our post ferment
(end gravity) readings.
The third solution is what we get when NO alcohol is influencing our
SG readings.
The fourth solution is what we_would_get if alcohol was influencing our
original gravity readings.
It will be seen that even though the 3rd and 4th solutions contain the
same amount of sugar, we get *very* different SG readings. The only
way to determine how much sugar is in solution 4 is to subtract the
influence that alcohol is having on that reading.
It should then be easy enough to understand that trying to compare one
reading that contains *no* alcohol to a second reading that *does* contain
alcohol is like comparing apples and oranges !! HTMS
Frederick
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