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The bottled or canned beer is brought to 20 °C and mechanically shaken, thereby achieving equilibrium between the oxygen dissolved in the beer and the oxygen present in the headspace (Henry’s and Dalton’s laws). By directly measuring either the oxygen in the beer or in the headspace, the total oxygen can be calculated through referencing a table of values, which includes the headspace volume as a percentage of the fill volume.

Osmolality is defined as the number of particles of osmotically active substances per kilogram of a solvent (usually water). The size or type of particles is irrelevant for the osmotic pressure, only the number of particles (cations, anions, sugars, organic acids, amino acids, proteins, ethanol, etc.) is of importance. The presence of substances dissolved in an aqueous solution lowers the freezing point, as compared with pure water. The freezing point is lowered in proportion to the amount of dissolved particles or molecules. For this reason, measuring the freezing point of a solution provides a means for calculating the concentration of dissolved particles. The more dissolved particles there are in a solution, the greater the drop in freezing point.