Gravity readings

[Dave Hornby]

Good afternoon everybody.

I was wondering if it is okay to take a gravity reading in the fermentation vessel or should we be using the cylinder?
I've seen a few YouTube video's where there just take a reading in the fv and I thought that's easier and was wondering if there's any reason we shouldn't do it. Thanks.

 

[Cwrw666]

I sanitise my hydrometer and just drop it in the fv. Once before adding the yeast and once when it looks finished.
You're risking adding an infection, but if you're dipping in your sample tube you're doing the same.
Harder to read the hydrometer accurately though especially with old eyes. Just glad they have coloured bands on the thing.

 

[Sadfield]

All my FV's have taps. If they didn't the it would be a trade off between ease of taking a measurement versus having 100ml of beer to sample. For me smell and taste is just as useful to monitor. Swings and roundabouts.

 

[MrWoolf]

I perfer to take a cylinder out of the wine and degas it before taking a reading, I'm sure I read somehwere, possibly in a 50 year old book, that the CO2 bubbles can cling to the hydrometer and give a false reading. Other than that i dont see any reason, other than poor eyesight ( like me) to leaving it in the FV.

 

[Agentgonzo]

the CO2 bubbles can cling to the hydrometer and give a false reading.

Give the hydrometer a quick spin before reading. It'll dislodge all the bubbles

 

[RoomWithABrew]

Use a refractometer, calibrated and the formula and then you'll need about 0.5ml of sample.

 

[tutshiveandspile]

For my old eyes. I bought a wide range hydrometer. It's about 1cm for every 5 points. Got mine from MM.

 

[lmbollinger]

I’ve been using the plaato airlock lately. Takes a while to train the algorithm, but about 5 brews in and it does okay estimating from the number of bubbles in the airlock. There are some floating hydrometer (tilt comes to mind) that wirelessly send data to your device