Gravity readings in the Bucket

How do you guys take your gravity readings when fermenting in the bucket. Seems like taking the airlock out and using using a 60CC syringe with some tubing attached would be the most effective way. Not real crazy about removing the lid more than I have to. Your thoughts?

You open up your fermenter each time. We spend so much time online, in books and podcasts cautioning brewers what not to do and we ALSO preach on those same mediums the value of taking a hydro reading. If there really was a problem with opening our buckets to take a reading, do you think we would advocate it so much?????

As long as you sanitize, and are careful, you won't have a problem.


This is what I use, and it works with both buckets and carboys. I replaced the plastic one a year ago with an extra long stainless baster from a kitchen ware store and it is awesome. But the plastic one from any grocery store works fine.



And



Here's what I do....

1) With a spray bottle filled with starsan I spray the lid of my bucket, or the mouth of the carboy, including the bung. Then I spray my turkey baster inside and out with sanitize (or dunking it in a container of sanitizer).

2) Open fermenter.

3) Draw Sample

4) fill sample jar (usualy 2-3 turky baster draws

5)Spray bung or lid with sanitizer again

6) Close lid or bung

6) take reading

It is less than 30 seconds from the time the lid is removed until it is closed again.

Probably less if you have help. And unless a bird flies in your place and lets go with some poop, you should be okay.

I just toss the hydrometer in the bucket when I have five gallon batches. Glass is as easy to sanitize as anything, and it's much easier to make sure the outside of a hydrometer is clean and sanitized than the inside of a thief. It takes me 45 seconds tops to do a reading, so I'm not concerned about oxidation either.

I also just put the hydrometer directly in the bucket. The only time that is problematic is on beers that form a krausen that just won't go away. I've had a few hefes and a Kolsch do that. I pulled samples with a turkey baster in those cases.

After you take your gravity reading externally do you guys discard the sample or pour it back in the batch if everything is sanitized previous to taking the sample?

LCTitan said:

After you take your gravity reading externally do you guys discard the sample or pour it back in the batch if everything is sanitized previous to taking the sample?

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Drink it. It lets you know how your beer is developing.

Drink it, or spill it in the sink, don't pour it back into the fermenter, that increases the risk of causing an infection.

Hoping for these for Christmas:
http://brewballstore.com/

Those are some great looking balls!

You do know you'll have to open the bucket when you'll be bottling right ? And for a whole lot longer ? And usually you bottle in the kitchen where you usually have healthy colonies of bacteria/germs/yeast (notably pedio and lacto) going on ?

Relax, clean and sanitize everything and take your reading. Or just wait 6 weeks in the primary and take a reading then if nothing seems problematic. If fermentation is going, anything that drops in will have to fight the yeast: there's a reason yeats produces alcohol and it is to make their habitat (here wort) hostile to other bugs. Except for our good friend Brett who doesn't care about all that, but Brett works slowly.

the little brew balls look a bit gimmicky to me (but thats just me)

Thanks guys for the responses. I was more concerned with the PITA that comes with opening and putting back the lid each time I open it rather than the worries about oxidation. This is why I thought it would be much easier to remove the airlock and extract the sample from that hole. The beer will never be in the primary for more than four weeks max. Good idea about sampling the beer. I actually forgot about that.

Moving up from Mr. Beer which has been a great learning experience.

You can leave the beer in the primary for longer than 4 weeks if you want. It won't hurt anything unless you are brewing something wich needs to be drunk very, very young or if you leave it for ungodly amounts of time (6 months ? a year ?). Concerns about autolysis if fermentation went normally are largely unfounded: I'd be concerned if the first batch of yeast you pitched acted bizarely and you had to repitch, you seriously underpitched or if you had an infection (and not one of the pleasant ones).

Nothing wrong with letting it chill on the cake. The cake/trub will only compact more at the bottom and it will give the beer time to condition in bulk instead of in individual bottles.

When I took my initial gravity reading, I just filled my test tube from the tap at the bottom of the primary. Dropped in my hydrometer.

Can I not do that for subsequent gravity readings? Simply relieve any pressure on the air lock before opening the tap? Always seems a lot of crud around air locks, and therefore some risk, so is there a reason I cannot use the tap?

Thoughts ?????

Ofcourse you can use the tap. Not all fermentation vessels have taps though, hence the question I presume.