What's the BEST HYDROMETER? How to calculate Alcohol by Volume $8-$350
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- čas přidán 29. 06. 2024
- Do you need something better than a basic hydrometer to get good readings for specific gravity? Today I'm going through four different options to measure your specific gravity for four different budgets.
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HYDROMETER: amzn.to/3Nstm6e
REFRACTOMETER: amzn.to/38FTYSM
RAPT PILL: www.aliexpress.com/item/32568...
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ANTON PAAR EASYDENS: amzn.to/3yVAyDP
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0:00 Intro and Welcome
0:20 What is specific gravity?
1:30 How to get an accurate measurement
2:35 Hydrometers
4:14 Refractometers
7:06 Floating digital hydrometers
9:43 Anton Paar EasyDens
#hydrometer #refractometer #abv #easydens #rapt #pill #tilt #brewing #beer #homebrew - Jak na to + styl
I wish you had more videos like this that act as informative how to brew videos.
Nice video! I always use a refractometer during the brewing proces. For the OG and FG I use a hydrometer and to track the fermentation progress, I use the Brewbrain Float (Tilt-like thing).
great insight on different tools for measuring worts/beers, I regularly use refractometer for runnings/lauter etc and hydrometer for OG and FG , cheers Steve!
Thanks! Cheers Raul!
Recently started getting those Rapt Pills in South Africa and I got one to try. Have to keep checking that it's calibrated between batches, but it's super fun being able to see and track the graphs on temp and gravity as your beer is in the fermenter.
I've really been struggling with the calibration for mine. It was off by 15 gravity points the other day. But it is useful to see how long fermentation actually takes.
Good video indeed. Btw, cant stop looking at your ocean view, great balcony!
Thank you!
Thanks for the video. I use a hydrometer and a tilt. Like you said in the video I find the tilt gives inaccurate readings after krausen hits. But, it's great for real time monitoring of the fermentation conditions and the temperature. The hydrometer is for accurate OG and FG.
Great video! I've been using something similar to the Tilt, an iSpindel with pretty good results. The calibration is pretty tedious, but it was a good price and plugs into my brewfather app.
Give GravityMon a look. It's much better than the stock firmware.
Upping that Thumbnail game, enjoying it loads! That $350 does look good but I feel like i'd end up forgetting to use it half the time!
Lol thanks for watching this *flawless extremely high effort* content I threw together in the middle of my wedding week. Thumbnail was about the only thing I actually had time to put real effort into lol
Excellent breakdown, I tend to use a refractometer a lot and you are right about a lot of the points, I have had to bookmark the calculator on my phone so I have less hassle getting the right measurement hah
Thanks Trent! It's a bit extra work sometimes but at least you're not losing a ton of liquid at the end of it!
This has always been the thing I care the least to upgrade...while I would love all the numbers and data, any money spent on this I would rather spend on anything else of my brewing equipment...thanks for the good information
Gadgetry is fun, but totally unnecessary. I agree!
I kinda feel the same way, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't intrigued or interested in one. In the end, if you still have to use a hydrometer to confirm FG, might as well save the extra money for other brewery goodies. My cousin has a Tilt, so maybe I could borrow it to confirm.
@TheApartmentBrewer The Tilt is $135, not $200, on Northern Brewer's sight. The Tilt Pro is $250.
Awesome video, It seems I am in the majority with your obviously intelligent viewers haha, I use a refractometer during brewing, Rapt pill during ferment... I may start with the old hydrometer when keging just to double check. I appreciated the tip in the comments about evaporation, I have had issues in the past so may try pinching the pipette and rapid chilling like suggested, sounds like a solid idea.
Thx for the explanation :D
Great overview of choices. A refractometer is my go to brew day tool. One word of caution, when taking samples of very hot (near or boiling) wort, evaporation from a tiny sample is an issue that can greatly effect accuracy. I pinch closed the pipette and rapidly cool the sample in some iced water before placing the sample on the lens. Don't rely on automatic temp correction. Being a bit of a geek, I can't go past my Kegland Pill for fermentation data logging.
That has caused issues for me in the past. Also stratification of the sugar content in the wort after chilling has caused my measurements to be a bit off
I love my Rapt Pills, I had to get the hook up from my fav Canadian Brewtuber but nonetheless very happy with the devices
James is the man!
Damn it looks nice down there! I would love to get me an Easy Dens, but the Rapt Pill works just fine for me now! Someday. Cheers!
I've been really having issues with my rapt pill unfortunately. Seems to have these wild gravity swings despite calibration. Might just be intense fermentation but who knows. Cheers!
Some good info in this vid - was hoping for a head to head comparison between the four options to see how accurate they are (or aren't). Cheers
Honestly that depends on how much you arr willing to spend on high end vs low end versions of the same equipment. As far as my experience goes, in order of most to least accurate: easydens, hydrometer, refractometer, rapt pill
Great video Steve! Im a hydrometer and refractometer guy myself but I do love toys so maybe one of those Rapt pills or easy dens might be in my future!
Cheers Brian! Toys are fun but you can't beat the OG equipment (pun intended)
@@TheApartmentBrewer 🤣🤣
Hey dude love your videos! Can you please do a video on kegging? I've started homebrewing in the last few months and and I'm looking into kegging my beer aswell as bottling.
Very informative.
Cheers!
refractometer whilst going through the brewing process, then a reading with my tilt just before giving the wort and oxygen blast prior to pitching my yeast, for ABV calculation. The dissolved oxygen in the wort affects the tilt reading until it's all been consumed by the yeast, when the tilt will jump back to a higher gravity reading.
Good vid. Another option between the tilt/pill level and the EasyDens is a digital refractometer like the Milwaukee MA871. I think it's around $130... maybe more now. Some testing I've done with the MA871 and the EasyDens, they were reporting the same starting gravity numbers, if your brix correction factor is good. Final gravity was a different story.
However, as you can gather from above, I have an EasyDens. And I absolutely love it, and have sold my MA871. I did get the EasyDens for $296 on black friday, last year. I have a tilt as well, but just rely on it for fermentation progress and data, and not necessarily accurate gravity measurements.
Nice! Never actually heard of that but seems like a reasonable price for what it does. Easydens is nice but it's just a steep price to pay
In my opinion the digital refractometers are not really worth it. They look very precise, but I often have the problem that repeated measurements result in heavily varying values. The situation is comparable to analog refractometers where the separation line may become blurry.
In the past 10 years I used glass hydrometers, a cheap analog refractometer from China and a Milwaukee digital refractometer. For me they are more or less equal. My advice is therefore to keep it simple. Use either a classic hydrometer or an analog refractometer if you want to keep the sample sizes small. Save the money and upgrade to an Easydens later.
@@januszkszczotek8587 I had no issue with the digital refractometer. When I first got the easydens, I measured the same sample on both for a couple of brewdays, pre and post boil and they both agreed on the gravity.
Since I have poor eyesight, the manual refractometers and the cheap triple scale hydrometers were a pain for me. Plus if you calibrate the cheap hydrometers, they can be really off. I have one that is off by .003.
Great video! Have you done a PH meter comparison yet?
Nope, but that's a good idea!
I would probably agree with Clawhammer that the refractometer belongs in the trash in regards to its usefulness. I only use one during mash and boil (tough to cool 8os of liquid every 10 minutes to do a check) to see if I am getting conversion, but like you said it is effected by color as well.
I use a hydrometer and refractometer. I find they give different readings for the same wort sample. I rely on the hydrometer for preboil gravity, O.G and F.G. I use the refractometer for taking multiple readings during lautering. Good video.
Thats pretty much my method as well. I use the hydrometer for the "official" readings and I use the refractometer for a quick understanding of whats going on.
@@liamfbules2999 yeah works for me.
Different devices with different calibration settings maybe? The wort correction factor of refractometers always throws my readings off a bit. But they are very good for a quick ballpark measurement
@@TheApartmentBrewer agree
Cheers from Knoxville!
Thank you!! Welcome back home!
Hydrometers also need to be calibrated in water. Just to know the offset, bought cheep ones that read .004 off right out the package. Just have to correct after and you are good.
My preferred method is precision plato hydrometers (need 3 for the full range). Lab calibrated and very easy reading with built in temperature thermometer/ correction scale.
Downside is it's 60$ per. But super accurate and reliable.
That's a good point!
Well dang! I would use my refractometer post fermentation so that way I can save as much beer as possible! It just makes sense to me to take a few drops then a whole sample When the beer is done. I might have to change this...
Yeah your readings may be off, but if you're plugging them into the right calculators you're not going to be very far off
The best one is once that works. Unless you are going to sell your beer and need to comply with regulations regarding alcohol content, any hydrometer will do. For home use it doesn't really matter if it's a bit off
I use an iSpindel to monitor trends in fermentation, without an expectation of accuracy in SG. All I care about is if the fermentation proceeds well and if it's over. For OG and FG, I use a digital refractometer, with a higher expectation of accuracy in OG. If I want an accurate SG, I use a 50ml pycnometer and a balance with a precision of 0.002g and that delivers pretty accurate SG's. However, calculating ABV from OG and SG is not very accurate. I just expect to get a reasonable estimate of ABV and that's all you can expect from measurements based on SG. For accurate ABV, other methods are necessary.
The usefulness of a floating hydrometer in the fermentation is significant! What's the pycnometer cost you?
Question, how do you get the refractometer video shots; would be nice to see if I can do it with my iPhone to read it easier.
I used my phone for those. Just put the camera right up to the eyecup and it worked nicely.
Hello!! Just the other day, I was about to pull the trigger on the Anton Paar EasyDens.
Then I looked at the app in the iOS App Store and from what I could tell, you HAVE to pay either monthly or annually a fee to use the app? Is this the case?
I just got mad. I don't mind dropping some $$ on a good instrument, but I refuse to *rent* the software to run it....
I can't at this time, find anything out there that refutes you have to pay for the software app to run this unit...can you help me out and let me know if there is any way to use the app for free or something else to run the EasyDens?
Thank you in advance,
CC
Understandable. You get to use the app for free but it is a paid upgrade to add more than 10 batches of tracking. You can certainly delete and overwrite old batches though
IMO if you're not selling it, then why does it matter about accuracy? I use an iSpindel to track fermentation progress to known when it's definitely fully finished and temperature to know when it's fully crash cooled. Then I use a refractometer to confirm OG and FG... most of the time... But the iSpindel is good enough that I know the ABV as near as matters. Also, you're making it to enjoy the sensory experience of drinking, so you brew it, taste it, and then it's either too late to adjust it, or you maybe add Amylase in a stuck fermentation, or a non fermentable sugar to back sweeten if it dried out too far.
I think it's similar to how people look at brewhouse efficiency. I personally don't care about efficiency but I try to be deliberate with my SG measurements. Definitely a matter of personal opinion!
I like my tried and true hydrometer. I wished the numbers were bigger for old eyes 👀
They're tough for younger eyes too sometimes. But nothing beats the simplicity!
Hydrometers that I've come across in Europe are calibrated at 20 degrees Celsius, not 15.5!
Wish that was the case here!
Milwaukee MA884 Digital Brix
Just found that for sale online. Anyone heard of it or used it?
$153.00 from Milwaukee Instruments.
I think someone else commented referencing this. Seems like a great option!
How to calculate Alcohol by Volume ? you don't know? Dude you pour in you're throat , and when you're vision get blurred , you're had to much volume 😁😁👍👍
This is the only approved method
I used to measure gravity when I started.
I haven't measured it in over a year. Don't really see the point. It's not like I can do anything about it in the end.
Oh... I was shooting for 1046 and I got 1041.. So.... Ummm who cares.. Move on with your day.
Fair enough and to each their own. I care a lot about ABV measurement but don't really care about efficiency.