refractometer

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

derek224

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 23, 2012
Messages
67
Reaction score
1
Location
bellevue
I was looking at getting one of these to use instead of a hydrometer. Are the eBay ones that are 25 bucks shipped any good?
 
Idk but you'll still need a hydrometer for your final gravity readings.
 
The presence of alcohol throws off the refractometer reading but apparently there's a conversion somewhere out there so nevermind me.
 
This is a quote from yooper on another thread:

"It works- sort of.

It will not give you an accurate FG in my experience, even with correction tables and formulas. But it should be within .008 or so. That's a lot, so I don't trust it at all. It won't give you bottle bombs or anything- but the difference between 1.009 and 1.016 is pretty big."
 
I have wrong readings after the boil, when the beer have a lot of hop particules (pellets), so it's only useful for monitoring the mash runoff and measuring the pre-boil gravity. Otherwise, you have to use your old school hydrometer. Any formulas I found to correct the alcohol reading for yhe refractometer were inacurates!
 
Back
Top