Glass hates me!

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GreenDragon

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I never knew a mineral could hate someone but glass officially hates me! I've previously broken two hydrometers and then yesterday I broke my floating thermometer IN my brew just by stirring it!

Mercury thermometers are illegal now so I just let it brew. It was an IPA so I had to strain it anyhow. Pretty sure I got 99% of the glass out of it.

Anyone know of a plexiglass or plastic hydrometer and thermometer?

My first really high gravity beer too.. 1.068 OG.
 
Even though I know it wasn't mercury, I was a little worried about what was in the thermometer that I broke in my brew. There are plenty of other nasty liquids out there other then mercury. I googled it and found this:

"You can identify the liquid in a thermometer based on its color. Silver liquid indicates that the thermometer contains mercury, while red liquid is alcohol to which red coloring has been added. Although uncommon in modern thermometers, a clear color indicates water."

Mine was red, so ironically my beer got a tiny bit of alcohol added to it, lol.

So basically I can continue relaxing and enjoying my homebrew stout that is finally done while I wait on this batch and the wheat to finish up.
 
I broke two floating thermometers on back to back batches and then two hydrometers in a month. I gave up on the glass thermometer and got and love my thermapen. I was lucky that they just cracked and nothing leaked out so my beers were ok but still when you hear that pop or crack it sends tingles up your spine!
 
Does it mention what type of alcohol? Ethyl alcohol is what we get in the beer, Isopropyl alcohol is rubbing alcohol, and Methyl is wood alcohol and I believe both are fairly highly toxic, esp the Methyl. I suppose though it would have boiled off in during the boil but I would be very leery about assuming that all alcohol is the same.

I recommend getting an instant read mettle thermometer that goes between 0-220 deg f such as this one:
http://www.google.com/products/cata...=X&ei=_MalTYXcNMiO0QHl_JDoBQ&ved=0CDwQ8gIwAA#

There are countless examples. As for hydrometers, I think that they are all glass but are built to easily take high heat temps, the problem you run into is dropping them into the liquid too hard and having them hit the bottom and crack.
 
I just bought that thermometer you posted off Amazon for $6 with free shipping, thanks! I'll look into a refractometer.. gotta sneak the price by the wife somehow though.
 
I broke a floating thermometer in my fermenter once. All the little metal beads disolved in the beer and gave it a really strong and bad metallic taste. I gave it a chance, but I have since dumped must bottle since it completely undrinkable.
 
I have a couple of these. Pretty accurate and not bad for $4 shipped. :)

253-256.jpg


Digital Probe Thermometer
 
What exactly does a refractometer do? I have been brewing for a few years now and switched to all grain a while back and see that people post them and that I should get one but I don't know why.
 
What exactly does a refractometer do? I have been brewing for a few years now and switched to all grain a while back and see that people post them and that I should get one but I don't know why.

it takes the place of your hydrometer it tells you your OG, SG, FG, it used far less wort than a test tube needed for a hydro sample and its quick and easy. if you buy the ATC model it will account for the temperature thus not needing to wait for hot wort to cool down to temp.

the you can find the brix models which need to be input into a program to find your SG or buy a model that has brix and SG. those are a little more money though.


-=Jason=-
 
Refractometers measure the sugar concentration in water, which is what wort is (obviously). The HUGE up side to refractometers is that you only need a few drops of liquid to measure, not a whole tube full as with the hydrometer. The bad thing, is that they need to have both measurements, before and after to measure the alcohol by volume of a beer. If you don't have before and after, the math fails. Basically, you have two polynomials and no way of finding their values. Secondly, refractometers need to be converted to our widely known hydrometer reading, but that is easily done. There is a chart out there that will convert it to our hydrometer readings. They are nice to have, but not necessary. Really nice if you are already short on liquid.
 
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