Gera Tools

Gravity to Degrees Balling Converter

Convert specific gravity readings to the Balling sugar scale

Converts specific gravity to degrees Balling for brewers using older European recipe books or commercial references that quote the Balling scale. Shows the working and the near-identical Plato value for comparison. Runs 100% in your browser. It runs free in your browser on Gera Tools, with nothing uploaded.

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What is the difference between Balling and Plato?

Balling is the original 19th-century sugar scale; Plato is a later, slightly refined recalculation of the same idea. In the brewing range they differ by only a few hundredths of a degree, so for recipe work they are effectively identical.

The Balling scale is the original measure of dissolved sugar in brewing, still seen in older European recipe books and some commercial references. This tool converts a specific gravity reading into degrees Balling and shows the closely related Plato value for comparison.

How it works

Degrees Balling expresses the percentage of dissolved sugar by mass. Specific gravity measures the same thing as a density ratio. Because Balling and the later Plato scale coincide to within a few hundredths of a degree across the brewing range, the tool converts using the well-established cubic polynomial:

Balling = -616.868 + 1111.14 x SG - 630.272 x SG^2 + 135.997 x SG^3

This is the same curve used for Plato, which is why the tool reports both values side by side — for any practical brewing purpose they match.

Worked example

For a specific gravity of 1.048:

  • 1111.14 x 1.048 = 1164.48
  • -630.272 x 1.048^2 = -692.18
  • 135.997 x 1.048^3 = 156.58
  • Add the constant -616.868: about 12.0 °Balling.

So 1.048 corresponds to roughly 12 °Balling, a standard-strength wort.

Tips and notes

  • Enter the full specific gravity form (1.052), not the shorthand 52, so the polynomial receives the correct magnitude.
  • A handy field rule is that each degree Balling is about four gravity points, useful for a quick sanity check before you trust the precise figure.
  • For the rare case where you genuinely need to distinguish Balling from Plato, the difference is far smaller than typical hydrometer reading error. Every calculation runs locally in your browser.

Historical context: Balling vs Plato vs Brix

The Balling scale was developed by Karl Joseph Napoleon Balling in the 1840s as a measurement of dissolved sugar in sugar-industry liquors. It was later refined by Fritz Plato, whose adjusted tables corrected small measurement inaccuracies in the original Balling work. The resulting Plato scale became the standard used by the German brewing industry and has spread globally.

The Brix scale, used extensively in winemaking and fruit-juice industries, is essentially identical to Plato for practical purposes and was derived from the same 19th-century measurement tradition. In the brewing range — roughly 1.030 to 1.120 SG — all three scales agree within a fraction of a degree.

When you see an old Central European recipe calling for “20° Balling”, it means a wort with about 20 grams of dissolved sugar per 100 grams of wort, equivalent to roughly 1.082 SG. Contemporary German lager specifications often cite the starting extract (Stammwürze) in degrees Plato; classic Czech lager categories are defined in degrees Balling or Plato (a “10° pivo” being a wort near 10° Balling, roughly 1.040 SG).

Using the Balling value for attenuation calculations

Once you have the original Balling value and measure the terminal gravity of your fermented beer, you can estimate the apparent degree of attenuation (ADF):

ADF (%) = (OB - FG_balling) / OB × 100

where OB is the original degrees Balling and FG_balling is the final gravity converted to Balling by the same conversion. A typical lager attenuates to around 75–82% ADF. Convert both your original and final hydrometer readings through this tool, then apply the formula to stay consistent with the Balling framework used in the source recipe.