Thermometer Reccomendations

I have two metal stick thermometers, but after stepping on one, it is inaccurate and now I mixed them up and do not know which one is the inaccurate one (yeah, FML). Anyways, went down to the local sports store and in the cooking section they had one of those digital thermometers which seems like a good idea considering I can set my mash in temp and when it gets to it an alarm goes off (meaning I can go do other things while heating up my water. Does anyone have anything bad against this type? Any other better suggestions or why?

A lot of people will recommend the thermapen, but its $100. I went with a different one from Thermoworks, I think it was $40. Buy it on amazon. After looking around for a bit, the only ones I found at target, etc. were cheap ones that aren't any more accurate than analog. Upgrading to an accurate thermometer is definitely a necessity in my opinion.

I think I've heard that if you leave the probe from the digital therms submerged too long they can break. I don't know if this is true, but it's something I've read a few times now.

I like to use a candy thermometer. It's accurate, it has the necessary temp range, and it's only 10 bucks. This works for my set up (stove-top) but may not be the best option if you're working with larger pots on turkey fryers.

By digital do you mean a digital stick or a digital w/ a remote connected either by wire or wireless?

We've never had luck with the digital sticks. They're fine until they get submerged, which seems inevitable in our house. One lasted until its battery died and I could not find a replacement.

I finally sprung for a $20 Taylor with a wand-on-a-wire. I love it. It gives me a clear number so I can tell 148F from 152F. My dial thermometer was only graduated in 5F increments. My wife thought $20 was way too much for such a tool until I explained that it uses regular AA batteries and the wire could be removed for cleaning. She was pacified by the idea that in the long run the $20 thermometer would be a money saver.

I like it that I can set the wire in the mash tun and close the lid and read the temp from outside. It is also nice to set it on the edge of the boiler to keep my hand away from hot steam.

The probe on a wire ones are generally not that accurate at least not in this $20 range. I've had three of those taylors at the same time and they all read different by at least 3F.

I do like the yellow Taylor recalibratable one (waterproof) for $15 but that was until I got my hands on the CDN proaccurate which is basically the same but with bigger numbers and a hold feature.

$20 too much? Haha, show her the thermapen.

boomtown25 said:

I have two metal stick thermometers, but after stepping on one, it is inaccurate and now I mixed them up and do not know which one is the inaccurate one (yeah, FML). Anyways, went down to the local sports store and in the cooking section they had one of those digital thermometers which seems like a good idea considering I can set my mash in temp and when it gets to it an alarm goes off (meaning I can go do other things while heating up my water. Does anyone have anything bad against this type? Any other better suggestions or why?

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While you look around for something new, you can just calibrate both thermometers using these two standards:
Ice slurry = 32F
Boiling Water = 212F

That will give you two points. You can determine their accuracy by plotting it out for all other temperatures. Only risk is you have to assume it's linear.

Hmm. Definitely not springing for the thermapen any time soon, too much other stuff I need first! The digital one I was looking at is $15-20 and it is a stick on a wire. There was even one that had a remote alarm that went off when your temp is reached that you attach to your belt and works up to 100 feet. I will calibrate doing the boil method on mine right now and decide on whether to save for better or go with digital $20 one.

When I bought my $20 one it was because my dial-faced stick got out of whack.

I put it in an ice bath and adjusted it to 32F, but it was way off when I put it in boiling water.

I can handle 3F error. I'm not out to win blue ribbons. It may make things slightly different, but not that different. It's not like 3F temperature error in the mash is going to produce a porter instead of a pale ale. It's still going to be a pale ale whether the mash is at 153F or 156F.

This gets my vote: Craftsman Digital Multimeter with Manual Ranging, 8-Function
Looks to be a decent multi use tool and does come with a type K temperature probe.