Tilt Hydrometer? (More Big boys toys?)

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My initial thoughts were novelty over functionality, and £150 could be better utilised for greater return in other areas.

Saying that a club member has just made one for around a fifth of the price, so I'll see how he gets on with it.

https://macchomebrew.club/digital-hydrometers-are-they-it-worth-it/
So that's how they work! (Or more accurately; that's how I now think they work). Could never understand how they coped with a couple of inches of yeasty froth. I suppose the clue was in the name ("Tilt").
 
I just got one a month ago and have brewed twice with it. It does work very well...even inside of my stainless conical. It is nice to measure gravity once or twice a day to observe how the ferment is going. But it's not really necessary until the final stage of fermentation where it enables frequent gravity checks without drawing off cylinders of beer.

I can definitely recommend it, but there are more important expenditures that many brewers should consider. But if you've got a top-kit, then this is a worthwhile 'enhancement' to your brewing tools.

Now if I could just get the automated gravity logging to the web to work reliably.
 
I read the massive thread on them on HBT a while back. Seems that they don't measure the absolute gravity very well, but can be useful for tracking how the fermentation is progressing.
 
With me it's my QC/QA side. I try to have anything in the BV except beer + hops to minimise the risk of cross contamination and wild yest. I take samples from the BV tap. SG/PH/PPM/*C then smell/taste. The smell/taste test gives me a great feel for how brew is progressing.
I tell my partner, Honest, I really need to drink that for QC purposes,,,,, she say's, OK, but not every hour! :blush2: ;)
 
At that price, I filed it under the "nice for people with money to spare" category. A category I am far from been in. Just think of the things you could buy with £150!!! Then use a normal glass hydrometer at the end of fermentation etc...
 
I guess they're handy if you want rack to secondary before a point when oxygen pickup becomes detrimental, dryhopped whilst there is still active fermentation or when racking to cask knowing when you reach a couple of points above FG.

Frustrating. They'd sell loads at a much lower price point, but won't sell enough to be able to lower the price.
 
I have one (more money than sense :beer6:)

Used it once and found the following issues:

Appeared to under read when compared to my hydrometer (I only set it up in water)
Got tangled up with my chiller coil and gave some very dodgy readings.
Got a load of crud on top
Data logging is a bit hit and miss. Only seems to work when phone is close by (within Bluetooth range) and then goes mad and logs every milli second.

Good bit
Got a graph out of Google Sheets without too much effort.
Looks cool.

Still work in progress as need to do a proper calibration and sort out the chiller coil fouling.

Did a bit of a google and found it was recommended that you still need to take hydrometer readings, which sort of rather defeats the object of it.

I will persevere :cheers1:
 
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