Purpose of Kettle Glass Sight?????

OK, self explanatory title. Seriously though, what is so great about the glass sight/purpose of the glass sight. I see no real reason for it. Please help me!!

The reason for it is sort of self explanatory. It helps verify the volume of wort you are putting in your kettle. It also shows at various stages of the boil how much wort you have in the kettle which helps you track and understand your boil off rate and allows you to compensate for changes in volume on the fly.

i really want to add one to my HLT. Right now i pre measure strike water and drain to MT, then have to start over again with sparge pre measured. Think it would be much easier with the sight glass.

Ok...so I guess this is a more professional tool than a calibrated stick that I woulds dunk into the kettle to measure volume. Ah hah. Thanks.

I have used the calibrated stick. Kinda sucks sometimes in the middle of an aggressive boil with steam blowing up in your face trying to see how far the stick is in and the boiling can make a liquid mark on the stick higher than the wort volume. I mean it works in a pinch, but the site glass is just a bit easier I guess.

I won't boil in my 15.5g kettle again until I instal one. There was so much steam I couldnt even tell when I had a boil much less what the volume of the liquid was.

I waited a few years to get one. If I had to go back and do it all again, I would have ponied up the cash from the get-go. It's not a huge thing, but sometimes tweaking the little things makes life easier.

I can see from far away how my boil-off is progressing. This changes all the time due to wind, propane tank fill level, outside temperature, barometric pressure, etc. There's no way to know for sure exactly what rate things are going to boil off, and this way I don't need to check with a dipstick every 10 minutes or guesstimate--I can see from 10 feet away if I'm closing in on my final volume too quickly, and reduce the heat, add water, etc. before it's too late.

Usually being a quart too high or too low at the end isn't a deal-breaker, but you have to also consider that the final volume affects the gravity as well. Some recipes are on the edge for style guidelines and every variable you can pin down helps.

Plus, the sight glass makes filling the kettle with a hose a breeze, and you can add o-rings that slide up and down the glass and serve as indicators for where you want to be at different stages of the process (strike water, sparge water, pre-boil volume, etc.)

I just added a sight glass to my kettle prior to my last brew, and I wish I would have done it sooner.

I can now hit my target volumes dead on, with minimal deviation. The stick method was hit or miss.

I put the BobbyM sightglasses in my boil kettle and HLT recently. Only regret was not doing it sooner, it's so much nicer than using a stick and trying to see what the level is.