Measuring stick

Anyone out there make their own measuring stick for their brew kettle? CPVC, Wood??

Tried that for my first kettle... Sucked big time. I now use sight glasses/tubes in kettles/keggles... MUCH better.

BTW, the sight tube I have in my keggle is my own design/manufacture. I sold my first keggle with one in it, so I made another for my new keggle.

Many, many threads on this, some people make a designated measuring stick out of wood or stainless, others just simply put some marks on their brew spoon, or mash paddle. I simply have one mark on my brew spoon that corresponds to finished batch size. My pot is 15 gal and also 15 " high so it is about as simple as can be to judge the amount of runnings collected. I've always had the fear of breaking a sight glass w/ a pot full of wort without a Dutch boy on site...YMMV

Link w/ a few examples below.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/kettle-measuring-stick-54336/index3.html

Harbor freight has a metal yard stick for 2 dollars. That's what I use.

I use a 68 cent wood Yard stick from home depot for my boil kettle. Works like a charm

I have a quick question about doing this. Typically I'm assuming you use the measuring stick to look at boiling wort but won't there be quite a bit of contraction when the wort cools.

To put this another way, the volume of boiling wort should be around 5% greater than at room temperature. So if you want 5 gallons of cooled wort then you want around 5.25 gallons of boiling wort. Does anybody correct for this when using this measuring method?

DrHop said:

I have a quick question about doing this. Typically I'm assuming you use the measuring stick to look at boiling wort but won't there be quite a bit of contraction when the wort cools.

To put this another way, the volume of boiling wort should be around 5% greater than at room temperature. So if you want 5 gallons of cooled wort then you want around 5.25 gallons of boiling wort. Does anybody correct for this when using this measuring method?

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Yes I do account for that. I have a calculator that tells me how many mm's I need depending on temperatures.

I bought a 36inch aluminum yard stick from Home Depot today. It was $3.00. I just flipped it over and marked lines with a permenant marker. Works great! I used it today to measure boil off.

I just put some notches in my spoon. Works great for me.

I have a tall plastic mash paddle- I just cut slots at 5, 5.5, 6, 6.5, 7, 7.5, 8, 8.5, 9, 9.5, 10, 10.5, 11, 11.5, and then a big line at "12". I etched the full gallon lines with the numbers. It's fairly crude, but it works!

I use a piece of copper tubing left over from building my mashtun manifold.

Marked the increments with a sharpie. Works great.

I use a piece of CPVC with gallon increments and quart increments. I calculated each mark based on volume of 160degF water, then tested by pouring with random amounts (1 quart, 7 quarts, 9 quarts, 15 quarts, etc). Once I made sure they matched up, I used a small bladed saw for minor increments and a thicker saw for major increments.

I then calculate + or - ~2% for cold water temperature or 200 degree wort (this based off a water density calculator).

Probably way overkill, but it was fun

Kosch

Saw a guy use a broken lacrosse stick the other day!!

I had a piece of scrap 1x4 in the garage so I cut it down to a 1x1 stick. Then I used an empty gallon milk jug to measure one gallon at a time in my brew pot and marked the stick with a pencil at each gallon. Then I took a hacksaw and cut notches on the stick at each gallon mark so I don't have to worry about the marks fading away.

Phyrst said:

I had a piece of scrap 1x4 in the garage so I cut it down to a 1x1 stick. Then I used an empty gallon milk jug to measure one gallon at a time in my brew pot and marked the stick with a pencil at each gallon. Then I took a hacksaw and cut notches on the stick at each gallon mark so I don't have to worry about the marks fading away.

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This is exactly what I did. It works great for collecting wort, and measuring strike/sparge water. 1 side of the stick is marked for my 10 gal kettle the other side for my 5 gal pots.

masonsjax said:

This is exactly what I did. It works great for collecting wort, and measuring strike/sparge water. 1 side of the stick is marked for my 10 gal kettle the other side for my 5 gal pots.

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What's the saying about great minds something something?

Golddiggie said:

Tried that for my first kettle... Sucked big time. I now use sight glasses/tubes in kettles/keggles... MUCH better.

BTW, the sight tube I have in my keggle is my own design/manufacture. I sold my first keggle with one in it, so I made another for my new keggle.

Click to expand...

Can you share the details?

I bought a Stainless Rule, inches one side, metric on the other, for about $11.

It's 3 feet long and my android app (Brewzor) calculates volume for me.

I had scratches in my stir paddle, but it kind of sucks, and is only good for one diameter vessel. This rule allows me to measure volume on any vessel in a few seconds.

4 gauge copper solid ground wire from home depot. Straightened out and notched with a file every 1/2 gallon.

threeporks said:

I bought a 36inch aluminum yard stick from Home Depot today. It was $3.00. I just flipped it over and marked lines with a permenant marker. Works great! I used it today to measure boil off.

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Bingo. My wife is still trying to figure out what happened to our aluminum yard stick.

I have a sight glass and don't like it.. keeps getting clogged with hops debris.

OHIOSTEVE said:

I have a sight glass and don't like it.. keeps getting clogged with hops debris.

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I've never had that with any of the ones I've used. This includes one on a Blichmann kettle (10 gallon) and either on the keggles I've made (made the sight tube too, from my own design)... I easily get the starting volume level (I've marked the shield on my sight tube) and the post boil volume. First one would show the current level during the boil (could see the hot break in it). The new one recirculates during the boil. I think that's due to the smaller inlet diameters (fittings into the keggle).

I just bought a dowel at a big box store. I mark it with a Sharpie when I've filled the kettle with known volumes. Won't break, won't leak.

ThreeDogsNE said:

I just bought a dowel at a big box store. I mark it with a Sharpie when I've filled the kettle with known volumes. Won't break, won't leak.

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I did this as well. Only I used a (very clean) soldering iron to burn my hash marks and numbers into my dowel. I think there is something to be said about measuring and marking your dip stick with the same temp water you will be using it at. I didn't and that would explain why I still have trouble with volume, even though I've calibrated my whole system from scratch 2 times. I did this with cool tap water..