Refractometer

[col222]

for calibration should i use the type of water i use in my brews

 

[Buffers brewery]

I use deionised or distilled water

 

[dmtaylor]

As long as there is no sugar in your standard tap water or whatever, just use that.

To be honest, refractometers are difficult to calibrate anyway. Mine fluctuates up and down from minute to minute between 0.0 - 0.4 Brix just measuring different droplets of water (which might be at different temperatures). So I always measure everything twice or three times, then take the average.

YMMV

 

[phildo79]

I think tap water is fine. But they are only good for pre-fermented wort. I had one for years and only used it a couple of times. A hydrometer is more accurate.

 

[Kveik Freak]

Get a hydrometer. And a spare hydrometer for when you inevitably break that one.

Unless you want to spend a fortune or spend a lot of time fiddling about calibrating the machine, a refractometer is likely to be a waste of time.

If you haven't already, I recommend grabbing yourself a cheap pH meter and the packets of chemical you'll need to make the calibration solutions. Each solution fits nicely in a jam jar like this one and they last until you spill or badly contaminate them. Being able to tell what's happening to your water and mash pH is great. I was able to improve my mash house efficiency quite a bit with mine.

If you calibrate it when you use it then its as accurate as the things at £2k plus that I used to use when I was a project scientist. The major difference is the dear machine only needs calibrated weekly or monthly and can live quite happily in the back of a van, whereas the cheap one is quite fragile and needs recalibrated each time it is used.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Each tool has its place.

• A refractometer is ideal for monitoring the SG of your mash runoff while sparging: the reading is instantaneous and you don't need to worry about the temperature of the sample (because the few drops used come almost immediately to the same temperature as the glass)
• A hydrometer is much better to test the SG of a fermentation or finished brew, because the presence of alcohol will throw off the reading of a refractometer.

The key thing with a refractometer is to get one marked ATC (auto temperature correction), and use it as follows: put a few drops of liquid on the glass so that it is evenly wet when you close the cover; and make sure there are no air bubbles under the cover.

Unless you want to spend a fortune or spend a lot of time fiddling about calibrating the machine, a refractometer is likely to be a waste of time.

Personally I don't call £12 a fortune.

 

[Kveik Freak]

Each tool has its place.

• A refractometer is ideal for monitoring the SG of your mash runoff while sparging: the reading is instantaneous and you don't need to worry about the temperature of the sample (because the few drops used come almost immediately to the same temperature as the glass)
• A hydrometer is much better to test the SG of a fermentation or finished brew, because the presence of alcohol will throw off the reading of a refractometer.

The key thing with a refractometer is to get one marked ATC (auto temperature correction), and use it as follows: put a few drops of liquid on the glass so that it is evenly wet when you close the cover; and make sure there are no air bubbles under the cover.

Personally I don't call £12 a fortune.

It's not, but cheap instruments tend to be more of a fiddle to calibrate. I'd consider one for the mash runoff, but I just stick the measuring cylinders in the fridge and they get down to room temp pretty quick.

 

[MmmBeer]

My refractometer cost peanuts and is a faithful friend on brewdays. The main benefits are the speed and the minimal amount of wort needed for each reading.

To calibrate a refractometer take two wine glasses and a boiling kettle, place one almost upside down over the spout and the other below to catch the drops of condensate from the first glass, you only need a few drops of this distilled water to calibrate with.

 

[Kveik Freak]

My refractometer cost peanuts and is a faithful friend on brewdays. The main benefits are the speed and the minimal amount of wort needed for each reading.

To calibrate a refractometer take two wine glasses and a boiling kettle, place one almost upside down over the spout and the other below to catch the drops of condensate from the first glass, you only need a few drops of this distilled water to calibrate with.

It's that easy? I might have to get one!

 

[JohnB]

Get a hydrometer. And a spare hydrometer for when you inevitably break that one.

Murphy's Law states if you buy one hydrometer it will surely roll off the bench onto the floor at it's first outing, but if you buy two, they will live happily together for many years to come.

 

[telenomus]

Murphy's Law states if you buy one hydrometer it will surely roll off the bench onto the floor at it's first outing, but if you buy two, they will live happily together for many years to come.
[/QUOTE]

In the mid-1980s I was told to buy that second hydrometer, because of the certainty of the impending breakage of the first one. What a waste of $ 5.00; it has never been out of the package !!

 

[sifty]

I've only been brewing since May and have broken 2 hydrometers.
Also have 2 refractometers as the first one I bought was brix only. Tend to use both type of instruments and compare results, but refractometer is so quick and easy during the brew regards easy cooling of sample...

 

[hughjamton]

My refractometer cost peanuts and is a faithful friend on brewdays. The main benefits are the speed and the minimal amount of wort needed for each reading.

To calibrate a refractometer take two wine glasses and a boiling kettle, place one almost upside down over the spout and the other below to catch the drops of condensate from the first glass, you only need a few drops of this distilled water to calibrate with.

What he said.
You can't calibrate with anything but distilled water, not even RO water.
All the people having trouble with their refractometer will always have trouble unless it's calibrated correctly.

 

[Tess Tickle's Brewery]

Having just bought one of these I am interested in this thread. Will try the steam trick to calibrate, thank you to the person who suggested it. Mine has S.G and brix on it, but I've learned brix and S.G are not linear, so you should ignore the S.G. side, is that right?

I am using this excel spreadsheet from the Brewer's Friend website to try and work out my correction factor. I understand it will take a few brews before I have an average though. I plan to sack off my hydrometer altogether eventually.

https://cdn2.brewersfriend.com/wort_correction_factor_1.0.xls

 

[phillc]

To throw into the mix an alternative, but not cheap, solution......

We had two refractometers and two hydrometers. We found that each instrument would return a slightly different reading, which is not ideal when trying to package and sell beer commercially.

Therefore, we bought an Anton Paar EasyDens device, which as you may have guessed, supports easy measurement of density. This is super quick and easy, and now we have just one digital instrument to rely on (with the others as backups if required). The gotcha? It's €350.

 

[Tess Tickle's Brewery]

I've seen David Heath advertising those. Ha ha - not gonna happen! That price is out of control!

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Having just bought one of these I am interested in this thread. Will try the steam trick to calibrate, thank you to the person who suggested it. Mine has S.G and brix on it, but I've learned brix and S.G are not linear, so you should ignore the S.G. side, is that right?

I am using this excel spreadsheet from the Brewer's Friend website to try and work out my correction factor. I understand it will take a few brews before I have an average though. I plan to sack off my hydrometer altogether eventually.

https://cdn2.brewersfriend.com/wort_correction_factor_1.0.xls

I find mine extremely convenient for keeping track of the wort gravity during run off, but I do find the hydrometer easier during fermentation - not least because I sometimes like a sneaky taste from the trial jar

 

[Hop_it]

Having just bought one of these I am interested in this thread. Will try the steam trick to calibrate, thank you to the person who suggested it. Mine has S.G and brix on it, but I've learned brix and S.G are not linear, so you should ignore the S.G. side, is that right?

I am using this excel spreadsheet from the Brewer's Friend website to try and work out my correction factor. I understand it will take a few brews before I have an average though. I plan to sack off my hydrometer altogether eventually.

https://cdn2.brewersfriend.com/wort_correction_factor_1.0.xls

I did this correction factor calibration a few years ago when I first bought a refractometer (see below). I was a bit surprised when the result came out below 1.0 because everything that I had read suggested that it would most likely be ~1.04. So, I decided to continue monitoring it with almost every brew I have made since then. The average so far is 1.025, but the individual results are all over the place
I have no idea whether this is because my refractometer is rubbish, or if it is due to measurement error? So, for the now I do not rely on it for my ABV calculations, and continue to use a hydrometer. It's a shame because the refractometer is so quick and convenient to use.
I didn't pay a lot for the refractometer (I can't remember how much, but I think that it was ~£25.00), so perhaps a better quality one would be more reliable?????

 

[peebee]

Hydrometers? Refractometers? I think some here are waiting for me to stick me oar in ...

Hydrometers are cr&p. You break them at a moments lapse of concentration. I can't read them (nowt to do with focus, it's "fixation" and fine parallel lines if you want to figure that out). There's this "meniscus" business to deal with. And the Americans (and there's a few on this forum) use hydrometers calibrated to a different standard that will read at least one point differently, and other countries use different calibration standards again. And everyone knows hydrometers read at a particular temperature, but few seem to know they are calibrated to two points.

Refractometers were never meant to measure the gravity of liquids. and certainly not to measure the comparative gravities of a solution as it ferments and the proportions of different sugars change. But if you have an online calculator that allows for the calculated amount of alcohol and the type of sugar in solution (even if that is "assumed" and not expected to change) then a refractometer is very good for making quick and dirty measurements which wont be that far out. Calibrate with distilled or deionised water? What for? With all the assumptions you have to accept to use a refractometer, using tap-water is pretty insignificant.

So I use ... (yeah, some folk know what I'm going to say) ... a Pyknometer. It' just a bottle you can fill precisely without worrying about lines and meniscus. The disadvantage is you need good weighing scales that measure two decimals of a gram (not those cr&ppy Chinese drug-dealer ones) and you have to do some simple maths to convert to what hydrometers read (Otherwise they only provide the density, not the relative density or so-called "specific gravity").

A hydrometer imitates what one of these bottles allows you to read. Why doesn't everyone use one? Well until recently suitable weighing scales could set you back 200 quid, whereas now; you do still need to fork out 35-50 quid (but they do come in useful).

Rant over; I feel much better now.

 

[Hop_it]

Hydrometers? Refractometers? I think some here are waiting for me to stick me oar in ...

Hydrometers are cr&p. You break them at a moments lapse of concentration. I can't read them (nowt to do with focus, it's "fixation" and fine parallel lines if you want to figure that out). There's this "meniscus" business to deal with. And the Americans (and there's a few on this forum) use hydrometers calibrated to a different standard that will read at least one point differently, and other countries use different calibration standards again. And everyone knows hydrometers read at a particular temperature, but few seem to know they are calibrated to two points.

Refractometers were never meant to measure the gravity of liquids. and certainly not to measure the comparative gravities of a solution as it ferments and the proportions of different sugars change. But if you have an online calculator that allows for the calculated amount of alcohol and the type of sugar in solution (even if that is "assumed" and not expected to change) then a refractometer is very good for making quick and dirty measurements which wont be that far out. Calibrate with distilled or deionised water? What for? With all the assumptions you have to accept to use a refractometer, using tap-water is pretty insignificant.

So I use ... (yeah, some folk know what I'm going to say) ... a Pyknometer. It' just a bottle you can fill precisely without worrying about lines and meniscus. The disadvantage is you need good weighing scales that measure two decimals of a gram (not those cr&ppy Chinese drug-dealer ones) and you have to do some simple maths to convert to what hydrometers read (Otherwise they only provide the density, not the relative density or so-called "specific gravity").

A hydrometer imitates what one of these bottles allows you to read. Why doesn't everyone use one? Well until recently suitable weighing scales could set you back 200 quid, whereas now; you do still need to fork out 35-50 quid (but they do come in useful).

Rant over; I feel much better now.

Your points by paragraph:
Yes
Yes
Yes . . . . Have been thinking about buying one, but struggling to justify the cost at the moment
Yes

But if all a homebrewer wants is a means to calculate an indication of mash efficiency, and a close approximation of alcohol content, then a decent hydrometer (or possibly a refractometer in which you can have some degree of confidence) is adequate. I suspect that many homebrewers (including me) can get a bit obsessed about the numbers, but when you think about it all that really matters is that the beer tastes good, and leaves you feeling comfortably numb