Greene King Unfiltered: The Tintometer
How did our first brewers master the art of the perfect pint? The answer lies deep within our Greene King archives — a small, unassuming piece of glass. This precious artefact was part of a larger device known as a 'Tintometer', used in the late 1800s to judge the quality of beer by its colour. We take a closer look at why the first tintometers were developed, how they work, and how beer quality control has changed over the centuries.
Meet Joseph Williams Lovibond
In the 1800s, up-and-coming brewer Joseph William Lovibond had a unique problem. His Salisbury brewery was growing in popularity, and his beer was becoming well known from Wiltshire to London. Still, he didn't have a way to ensure consistent product quality.
A groundbreaking idea came to him in the unlikeliest of places. While visiting his local church, he noticed the colours of the stained glass windows and realised he could guarantee the consistency of his beer by comparing it to his own amber-coloured glass pieces.
And soon, the first Tintometer was born. Lovibond created a rustic prototype in his own home: a simple sugar bowl with improvised slits that provided enough space to compare two pints of beer. The final piece of equipment, produced after 25 years of experimentation in 1887, was much more accurate, allowing a brewer to compare a beer sample with a control colour made from two or three glass filters layered together, taken from the Tintometer's collection of magenta, yellow and cyan glass pieces of various intensity.
A new level of quality control
For breweries like Lovibond Brewery, and a 'certain' growing brewery in Bury St. Edmunds, the Tintometer became an invaluable piece of the brewing process, allowing brands to maintain a high level of quality in their beers, but to confirm the ingredients used in the beer itself, such as the quantity of pale and coloured malts.
It wasn't long before the Tintometer's success was heard and read about across the world, and other industries also saw the benefit of colour analysis. Eimer and Amend in New York famously claimed that the Tintometer was 'invaluable to Chemists, Dyers, Brewers, Sugar Refineries and Flouring Mills.'
Lovibond's influence revolutionised a range of industries, and today it remains a major leader in colour measurement and water analysis.
A little help from our friends
It wasn't long before colour measurement became one of many forms of quality control, with advances in chemistry, refrigeration, and brewing equipment influencing the process.
Brewing and chemistry have a long history together, and at Greene King, Chief Chemists were employed to assist the Head Brewer and his team. All of these people would have had extensive training in the crafts, attending a Brewing School, and obtaining their degrees.
At the turn of the 20th century, another breakthrough joined the Tintometer as a means of consistency and quality control: the PH scale was invented by S.P.L. Sørensen at Carlsberg's Copenhagen brewery. This meant that brewers could not only measure the colour of their beer, but also the level of acids and alkaline in the liquid itself. Carlsberg's research into yeast and Louis Pasteur's 'Etudes de la Biere' had already had a significant impact on beer quality. This new development meant that breweries could further refine their products for customers, with saccharometers (to measure beer gravity), thermometers, and refrigeration becoming standard practice across the UK and Europe.
Greene King and the Institute of Brewing
Once known as the 'Laboratory Club', the Institute of Brewing (IOB) began intensive work on developing better methods and equipment for testing the many parameters important to producing good, consistent beers. Greene King was a member of the Institute, and we still are to this very day —in fact, our archives house a priceless collection of their scientific journals dating back to 1900.
In the late 1960s, Greene King was closely involved in developing new methods for beer testing as part of the IOB Analysis committee, and this vital work ushered in a period of significant change in both science and brewing science. The IOB methods developed became industry standard and were quickly merged with methods of the European Brewing Congress (EBC).
Passion in every drop
Over at our Bury St. Edmunds brewery, the quality control process is largely automated. However, many of the same methods are used today, and our laboratory technicians still play a key role in checking the quality of all our beers, including checking that our mineral balances are correct.
The gravity of beer has been and remains a key quality factor. In the 1980s, Greene King invested in density meters and refractometers that provide brewers with key information in a fraction of the time. And if that wasn't innovative enough, these instruments are supported by NIR, or Near Infra Red, measurements of our beer.
As our brewery technology improves, maintaining a consistent high-quality beer becomes easier, which means our laboratory team has even more time to focus on processes and developing new methods, edging closer to perfection in every pour.
Get even closer to Greene King
Want to read more about Greene King's rich history and heritage, or looking to find out more about our famous beers? Hunting for a Greene King pub near you? Find the latest stories, news and updates on our Behind the Bar blog and on our Newsroom page.