Something not adding up with °WK units and °Lintner units

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happychappie
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Something not adding up with °WK units and °Lintner units

Post by happychappie »

I'm not sure how many distillers do this but I base the fermentability/workability of my washes off a pretty simple calculation of °Lintner. °Lintner being a measure of diastatic power.

°L of grain/s x weight (lbs) of grain/s
———————————————————
Total grain weight (lbs)
=
Your total mash lintner, 35-40 ensures complete conversion (assuming the environment, temp, etc is ideal).

Here's the thing, I cannot find any info on this at all it's honestly bizarre, Lintner is an American standard right, it uses pounds. The European unit is °WK (Windisch-Kolbach), you can convert between the two. https://krugerbrewerblog.wordpress.com/ ... -formulae/
This article has got me stumped because it doesn't specify if you can use kilograms with °WK. Below is his equation:

o 2kg (4.4 lbs) 6 Row malt (Lintner = 160 )
o 1.5kg (3.3 lbs) Pale malt (Lintner = 140 )
o 1kg (2.2 lbs) Yellow corn meal (Lintner = 0 )

Total Grain weight = 4.4lbs + 3.3lbs + 2.2lbs = 9.9lbs

Total Diastatic power = (4.4 x 160) + (3.3 x 140) + (2.2 x 0)

= (704) + (462) + (0)

= 1166

Mash Diastatic power = 1166 Lintner divided by 9.9lbs

= 117.7 Lintner per pound

So he's using pounds here, right, ok. So what happens when I switch to metric and do kilograms instead of pounds? That seems to make sense because °WK is european and kilograms are european, but that end result, when converted back to °Lintner, doesn't amount it's imperial equal. It's completely different, which means you can only use pounds with lintner it looks like. Why does °WK even exist then? When you have to convert it to Lintner in order to figure out if your wash will work. If anyone knows anything about this please share your thoughts, just wondering if there's a way to figure out if a mash will convert successfully without having to convert kilograms to pounds everytime.
NormandieStill
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Re: Something not adding up with °WK units and °Lintner units

Post by NormandieStill »

Works for me. Using DP converted to WK by using the formula listed on your linked page, I get 117.7 Lintner per pound and 396 WK per kilo.
Using the formula the other way to convert WK back to Lintner I get 117.7.

The only problem I have with the maths is that using the linked formula 0° Lintner becomes -16 °WK.

Interestingly this would suggest that I need 124 WK to achieve complete conversion. I've been using online calculators and have ended up with Lintner figures even for my European grains. No that it's been an issue so far.
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happychappie
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Location: Melbourne

Re: Something not adding up with °WK units and °Lintner units

Post by happychappie »

Ahhh it all makes sense now, thanks for this
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