SACCEAROMETER, instrument used principally in the operations of brewing and making sugar. It serves to indicate the density of the liquid extracted from malt, or the degree to which the juice expressed from the sugar-cane is concentrated previously to undergoing the process of crystallisation; in other Words it is a measurer of the sweetness of, or the amount of saccharine matter con tained in, a liquid.
The saccharometer which is most commonly employed is made of copper, and differs in form from the hydrometer in common use only in its stem, which is six inches long, having four equal faces, each less than a quarter of an inch in breadth. Three of these faces are graduated, and the volume and weight of the whole are such that when the instrument is immersed in water it sinks till the top of the stem is but little above the surface. The line at which the surface of the water cuts the stem is marked as the zero of the scale; and the graduations are such that, when. the instrument is immersed and floats upright in a vessel containing the saccharine matter, the number of the division at the surface expresses the density of the liquid by the number of pounds avoirdupois which ought to be added to the weight of a barrel of water, in order to show the weight of an equal volume of the liquid.
For the general purpose of determining the specific gravity of fluids, on the principle of the hydrometer and saccharometer, the best instrument is one which consists of a glasg cylinder about seven inches long and three quarters of an inch in diameter. It has at its lower extremity a stirrup, carrying a small cup in the form of an inverted cone, and its opposite part is drawn out so as to form a slender stein or tube, which is terminated at the upper extremity by a small cup. About the middle of the stem a mark is made, and, in order that the instrument may be enabled to float vertically in a vessel containing the liquid whose specific gravity is to be determined, a constant weight, which may be a ball of glass containing mercury, is placed in the lower cup.