Hydrometer reading temp adjustments

I went to a random hydro temp calculator , and put in the most ridiculous temperatures to find out how much a reading can change , and even going from near freezing to 159 there is only a few hundreds of a point different in the readings . Is this right ? .. I always thought it would change much more than that

Since we read to the thousandths when taking a reading, yeah, it's significant.

1.050 could be 1.035 or 1.070. Temperature correction is very important.

GotPushrods said:

Since we read to the thousandths when taking a reading, yeah, it's significant.

1.050 could be 1.035 or 1.070. Temperature correction is very important.

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What I was referring to was unless your temps are 100f off your hydrometer is only gonna be a few small 0.000's off , no ?

ifearnothing0 said:

What I was referring to was unless your temps are 100f off your hydrometer is only gonna be a few small 0.000's off , no ?

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It will only be off a few thousands, but we're measuring in the hundredths, so it is fairly significant.

If you take a reading at 80*F and get 1.050.... the adjusted value is 1.052.

It's only 2 thousandths... but out of 50 thousandths. That a 4% error, which is worth adjusting for. That error will propagate and make it harder to find system issues later if you're trying to nail down volumes or BeerSmith inputs, for example.