Drawing S.G. sample from fermentor

Just wondering how other people are drawing sample from the carboy to do a gravity check. I've done it a couple ways: pouring, turkey baster, racking tube,...

It's kind of a pain, so I usually just wait for the lock to stop bubbling and do a check when racking to the secondary.

I use a thief, but it really doesn't matter what you use as long as it's sanitized properly.

A thief is as easy as they come.

i'm a turkey baster guy.

-walker

Thanks for the replies. I did not think about a thief. I thought they only worked with grape concoctions .

Turkey baster works good, but can be kinda short for reach the top of a 5G batch in a 7G carboy. Its easier from my smaller 2ndary.

Et-OH said:

Turkey baster works good, but can be kinda short for reach the top of a 5G batch in a 7G carboy. Its easier from my smaller 2ndary.

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I have a 1 foot long piece of siphon hose that I jam onto the end of the baster. Work great.

-walker

I actually don't worry about the gravity of my beer in the fermenter. I've found that checking it when it is racked works just fine. Then another gravity before it's bottled/kegged for the FG.

In my first batch ( I am only on my second batch ), I just dropping my hyrdrometer directly into the carboy during secondary fermentation. This seems to work fine for me. It can be tough to get a good reading though due to the optical distortions from the glass.

The gravity hardly changed at all during the secondary though. I don't think I will bother with it this time.

Vasie, it's not just the gravity that matters about racking your beer to the secondary. There are other processes going on in the beer, too.

Another matter, is that the beer will clear in the secondary as a fair bit settles to the bottom. Admittedly, that's not important if you don't mind unclear beer (Personally I'm not all that fussed).

Also, you say that the gravity "hardly changed" in the secondary. Of course, I don't know how much/little that is in numbers, but the fact that it did change speaks for racking as well. If the yeast isn't done fermenting the sugars before you bottle, you can get some interesting, little grenades out of it as your bottles or keg might overcarbonate.

I just give it time in the secondary because I feel it benefits the beer.


Cheers,

Jens-Kristian

vasie said:

The gravity hardly changed at all during the secondary though. I don't think I will bother with it this time.

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you don't think you will bother with racking to a secondary fermenter or you won't bother with checking the gravity?
the former is not advised given that you have the necessary equipment, the latter is acceptable and common....