Degrees Windisch-Kolbach

The Windisch-Kolbach degree ( unit symbol  ° WK ), named after the German brewing scientist Wilhelm Windisch and the Luxembourg brewing scientist Paul Kolbach , is a unit used in Europe in the brewing industry , with which the ability of malt enzymes is measured to convert starch to sugar ( maltose ) to reduce ( diastatic force ). It is defined as the amount of maltose that is formed by 100 g of malt in 30 minutes at 20 ° C.

Another unit that is mainly used in the USA is the degree Lintner  (° L), the following relationship arises

(The following formulas are numerical equations , i.e. they do not refer to the units themselves, but to their numerical values ; these are shown here with curly brackets around the unit symbols, e.g. {° WK} is equal to the value of the enzyme activity divided by degree Windisch-Kolbach; example based on the two values ​​from the comparison with Katal from below: (334 + 16) / 3.5 = 100)

${\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}\{{}^{\circ }{\mbox{WK}}\}&=\left(3,5\cdot \{{}^{\circ }{\mbox{Lintner}}\}\right)-16\\\Leftrightarrow \{{}^{\circ }{\mbox{Lintner}}\}&={\frac {\{{}^{\circ }{\mbox{WK}}\}+16}{3,5}}\end{aligned}}}$

and

334 ° WK = 100 ° L = 3.014 · 10 ⁻⁷  catal  = 18.08  enzyme units

See also

• Degree Pollak

source

• W. Diemair: Analysis of food, detection and determination of food ingredients , Springer Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York 1967, pp. 255-256.