Measuring stick

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moto748

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Why didn't I think of this before? When I want exactly 9 litres in my stockpot..

Up till now I've been filling measuring jugs to the brim with hot/boiling water, and pouring them in. And then I thought, one of these days, you're going to scald yourself doing that. Wouldn't it be better and safer to fill the pot from a boiled kettle, as long as I knew exactly how much to put in... So using a long-handled spoon as a measuring stick, I carefully measured in the (cold!) water, and aligned with black sticky tape. Job jobbed!

Hardest part was balancing the spoon to take a pic! 😃 stick.jpg
 
That's one way to do it - known as an ullage stick. I just use a ruler to measure down to where the liquid is and read off the volume from a table I printed out. The water in the pot is in the shape of a cylinder, the volume of which is πr²h. Excel automates creating a table for every mm of h. For smaller volumes like a couple of litres for a yeast starter I'll weigh it in.
 
That's one way to do it - known as an ullage stick. I just use a ruler to measure down to where the liquid is and read off the volume from a table I printed out. The water in the pot is in the shape of a cylinder, the volume of which is πr²h. Excel automates creating a table for every mm of h. For smaller volumes like a couple of litres for a yeast starter I'll weigh it in.
I like!
Please do explanation for idiots..and me!
 
What melts my brain is that hot water has a greater volume than cold water, so if you do your measurements with cold water then in practice you're not quite putting the same amount of hot in as you want.

I used to agonise over this , these days I'm a lot more slapdash!
 
Yeah, I would have weighed, but 9 kg is beyond the range of my kitchen scales!

As for the difference between hot and cold water, i view that in the same way as I view "if using pelleted hops, allow 10% less" (or is it more, I never remember? 😃 ).

I don't worry about that, I figure it's 'in the margin of error'!
 
That's one way to do it - known as an ullage stick. I just use a ruler to measure down to where the liquid is and read off the volume from a table I printed out. The water in the pot is in the shape of a cylinder, the volume of which is πr²h. Excel automates creating a table for every mm of h. For smaller volumes like a couple of litres for a yeast starter I'll weigh it in.
I stick a stainless steel ruler in the water and measure up. Why didn't I think about doing it the other way round??

I too have a look up table.
 
Yeah, I would have weighed, but 9 kg is beyond the range of my kitchen scales!

As for the difference between hot and cold water, i view that in the same way as I view "if using pelleted hops, allow 10% less" (or is it more, I never remember? 😃 ).

I don't worry about that, I figure it's 'in the margin of error'!
If memory serves. Hot water is 4% 'higher'. I created my look up from the BIABacus spreadsheet
 
I use the Google calculator every brew day. I keep meaning to cut some notches into my mash paddle with a dremel but haven’t got round to it yet.

1625306328588.png


My vessel is 38cm across so that’s 19cm radius. 30 cm deep water is therefore 34 litres.
 
I’ve got a length of hard clear tube that I’ve etched at litre intervals. Took a while to set up, add a litre, mark it, etch it, but it works a treat.
Having broken my old one and having to do it all again, I now have a spare to mark off☺️
 
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