remilard
Well-Known Member
They all require expensive equipment. If you know someone at a brewery with a lab, ask them to do it. I know of breweries who will do this occasionally for homebrewers that they know. The marginal cost of an additional test for them is small, but it is an annoyance.
If you have a friend with a well equipped lab outside of a brewery, it depends on what equipment they have. The ASBC has a method for a gas chromatograph, it shouldn't be too hard to get that (if not on the internet, as a member of the ASBC which includes many brewery employees). You might ask Mary Beth Raines about the spectrophotographic method she used as I believe the source was other than the ASBC.
I'm skeptical of home methods of measuring alcohol because they all rely on the same assumption that you can easily boil all of the alcohol (or nearly so) out of the beer. This is precisely what Raines found was much harder to in a kitchen than anticipated (she was able to do it with small quantities in the lab).
