how do you all take a sample for hydrometer?

So, Took my first gravity reading from the fermenter last night.
I used a turkey baster. What a royal pain?!
First question, is how do you all sterilize the baster? I did't have a bucket of starsan to put it in. I just sprayed it down inside and out from my spray bottle of starsan. But, then I needed to put it down, so I soaked a paper towel in starsan and laid it on that while I opened the lid to the fermenter. Was that ok? Had to do 5 or more dips with the baster to get enough beer to float the hydrometer. It dripped all over the place. The good news is the beer tasted pretty dang good. My wife thought I was nuts when I poured it for both of us to test, but she enjoyed it too!
Is a thief any better? I'm thinking it would have been just as easy to stick my autosiphon in and pump it, and siphon beer into the hydrometer test thingie.
Any better suggestions?
Signed, 'A bad little sucker!'

A thief could probably have done it in one attempt, but then you wouldn't have had enough sample for both you and your wife!

What you did sounds fine - spraying with Starsan is sufficient to sanitize, you don't need a full soak.

I prefer using a turkey baster to a theif. It just takes practice. I don't care that it might take two or three pulls, it doesn't dribble like my theif used to.

As to how to sanitize it. There's two easy ways. Having a spray bottle of starsan in distilled water is perfect for sanitizing object and bucket lids/carboy bungs when sanitizing. You can also fill your hydromter test jar with sanitizer and stick the baster in it, and suck up some of the sanitzer. In fact what I sometimes do is just open up the quart spray bottle, pour some of the sanitizer into the test jar, sanitize the baster, then quickly pour the sanitizer back into the spray bottle before drawing a sample.

Doh! I didn't even think about being able to pour it back in the spray bottle!

I mix up star san and sanitize the beer thief.

I don't ever put it back in the bucket though.
Phase two of the test is to drink it and see what it tastes like.

I used to use a thief for carboys... then I started using buckets for primary fermenters. Now I just pull the top of the bucket off and drop the sanitized hydrometer right in the beer to take my readings.

Gary

I just sterilize my pyrex measuring cup, the kind with the handle like this

and dip it right in.

I never pour back into the fermenter though. First, I don't feel like sterilizing the hydrometer and testing tube. and second, tasting also tells you something about how the brew is coming along.

i use my thief but i drink my sample after.
Now that i am doing 1 gallon batches I will start using my refractometer for checks and get my samples with a pipette

I just drop the hydro in the bucket, give it a spin, and take the reading............

Used to sterilize and dunk my pyrex measuring cup like caveman3141. Just bought a 60ml hypodermic syringe a couple of weeks ago so have used that a few times recently and am really pleased with it. I spray starsan into the pyrex cup with syringe in there so the outside of the syringe gets a good coating. Draw back the plunger and suck up starsan into the syringe, give it a good shake then expel the starsan back into the pyrex cup and place the syringe in there. Usually takes 3 draws to get the perfect volume to fill my sample cylinder. Only the very tip of the syringe contacts the wort in my buckets. When drinking the sample I draw about 30 or 40ml into the syringe and expel it with a bit of force into the beer in the glass to get a bit of a head on top. Last night the head stayed right til the end on an ESB sample and I'm considering priming to style, and going much lower on the amount of priming sugar than I usually do, due to that.

menerdari said:

i use my thief but i drink my sample after.
Now that i am doing 1 gallon batches I will start using my refractometer for checks and get my samples with a pipette

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Can you get accurate readings with a refractometer after sugars are converted to alcohol? Other posts on this forum report that refractometers can be inaccurate after fermentation.

I always like to taste my sample as well, but it always hurts to have to pull such a large sample out of my precious brew.

Slow_Day said:

Can you get accurate readings with a refractometer after sugars are converted to alcohol? Other posts on this forum report that refractometers can be inaccurate after fermentation.

I always like to taste my sample as well, but it always hurts to have to pull such a large sample out of my precious brew.

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Accurate enough, I am not building rockets here.
There are online calculators that compensate for alcohol but you do have to have a good O.G. measurement to start with.
I have compared refractometer readings, after alcohol compensation, with actual hydrometer readings and have found them to be within a few points of each other.

dstranger99 said:

I just drop the hydro in the bucket, give it a spin, and take the reading............

Click to expand...

I do the same. Spray some starsan on a paper towel to put the lid on. Then sanitize my hydro and take my reading.

I used to do the drop the hydrometer in the bucket too, but after I researched more that the wort and water needs to be mixed very very well for an acurate OG reading, I had way to many bubbles to be able to see a reading. Also the turkey baster is hard to pull a good sample because so much dribbles back in, it takes me 3 pulls to get enough for the hydro tester.

Sounds stupid, but I just sanitize my auto siphon, and pump a little into my hydrometer tube.

Caveman3141 said:

I just sterilize my pyrex measuring cup, the kind with the handle like this

Click to expand...

Everything Caveman said.

I got a thief, went back to the cup.

menerdari said:

Accurate enough, I am not building rockets here.
There are online calculators that compensate for alcohol but you do have to have a good O.G. measurement to start with.
I have compared refractometer readings, after alcohol compensation, with actual hydrometer readings and have found them to be within a few points of each other.

Click to expand...

And if all you are doing is tracking fermentation it doesn't really matter the the alc mess the reading. Just make sure it is stable over a few days and then you can bottle/keg, then you can use that last little bit that always gets left in the fermenter for your FG with a hydrometer.

Grannyknot said:

Sounds stupid, but I just sanitize my auto siphon, and pump a little into my hydrometer tube.

Click to expand...

I use the lower half of my auto siphon as a wine thief. I lower it into the beer... give it a up/down shaking motion, and it fills with beer... even above the liquid level.

Jason

I use a thief but I pretty much stopped taking reading. Lets all be honest here, we are not taking reading to find out FG, we are curious as to how the beer tastes.

Three weeks primary, one week dry hop, done. Any sample taken along the way is for tasting. I'll grab one reading when its going into the keg to get carbed and consumed.

And it never goes back into the carboy.