EBC

EBC stands for European Brewing Convention.

The European Brewery Convention was founded in 1947 and supports the brew-scientific activities in Europe. The goal of the EBC is, the development of analytic methods to guarantee beer quality and to ensure a continuously high quality of raw materials and brewing procedures. Parameter like turbidity, color and the bitter value of beer are measured in EBC units. The current technology and engineering forum has been founded in 1990 by the EBC, with the task to develope simple technical procedures to optimize production and quality management in malt-houses and breweries. The successful work has caused the standardisation of many processes as well as the optimization of the hygienic design of process equippement and therefore a rising product quality.

EBC color is an important parameter for the quality control of beer and wort during the brewing procedure. The light absorption is measured at a wavelength of 430nm (MEBAK 2.16.2, EBC 9,4) to determine the color of beer and wort. The laboratory methode requires filtered samples with a turbidity of less than 1 EBC. Afterwards, the absorption (430nm) is measured in a 10mm cuvette. The sample diluted, until the absorption is below 2 extinction units (E430) if necessary. Finally the EBC color is calculated as follow:

EBC color = E430 x 25 x dilution factor