Measuring water and wort volumes

I have been reading a great deal lately, like many others, I want to move to AG. With that in mind, I have been collecting equipment and advice in roughly equal amounts. How do many of you measure your liquid volumes, a sightglass while nice, is not in my recent economic forecast. It seems if I want to accurately gauge my efficiency, I first need to accurately measure my volumes. Thanks for your help.
Jim

I bought a wood dowel from home depot. Then I poured a gallon at a time into my kettle and carved a line in the dowel with a knife at each gallon mark. One piece of advice is dont be cheap on the dowel. Spend the extra $2 and buy a thicker one. Dont ask me how I know but the ones you can buy for under a dollar have a tendancy to snap.

I used a 1/2" piece of cpvc tubing, marked with a sharpie; black @ gal, red @ 1/2 gal & blue @ qt.

I bought a 5 foot piece of food grade PVC and drilled holes in it at each gallon mark in my boil kettle. I used a gallon container of water and just kept adding one gallon of water, marking the pvc with a hole until I reach 8 gallons or so. By submerging the pipe in my boil, I should be able to get a good idea of volume. Haven't actually used this method so far, but will tomorrow.

Interested to see how others tackle this for sure. I know some folks mark the outside of the kettle, but I wanted to try something different.

djt17 said:

I used a 1/2" piece of cpvc tubing, marked with a sharpie; black @ gal, red @ 1/2 gal & blue @ qt.

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I imagine you have to reapply the sharpie marks every couple of uses, right? Wouldn't submerging the pvc in the boil eventually wear those marks off?

I do like the fact that you have half gallon marks on yours. I'm thinking I could use larger drill bits to mark gallons and smaller drill bits to mark the half gallons.

I took the spike from my keggle and marked each gallon by indentations with a pipe cutter. Got this idea from someone else on here.

I simply marked the big wooden spoon that I use for a mash paddle. I placed a single notch in the spoon that shows the finished batch volume in the kettle. The kettle is a 15 gallon 15" high pot, so every inch is one gallon, therefore easy enough to eyeball. I simply sparge to reach about 2 1/2 gallons over finished batch size, boil off 1 1/2 gallons and lose a gallon to trub and yeast. It really can be very simple. I also don't reall time my boil bittering addition, I just merely go by boiloff, so I usually boil 60 - 75 minutes. I like to keep it simple and target finished batch size...keep it simple and concentrate on the one most important goal.

Riseabovebb said:

I imagine you have to reapply the sharpie marks every couple of uses, right? Wouldn't submerging the pvc in the boil eventually wear those marks off?

I do like the fact that you have half gallon marks on yours. I'm thinking I could use larger drill bits to mark gallons and smaller drill bits to mark the half gallons.

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I have brewed 20 batches since marked, the marks are still like new.

Thanks for your help,
Looks like a story pole is in my future. Nobody marks the inside of there pots?
Thanks again,
Jim