How to read this?

Hi!

I'm brewing up my first batch in Europe as I type - it took me a while to get all the equipment together, but i've got it and it's finally brewday! I picked up a hydrometer at the (relatively) lhbs, pulled it out today and found this.



I'm brewing an ordinary bitter , nothing too crazy - and was expecting an OG of 1.034. When I took the pre-boil reading, this gave me '8' @60ºC - I'm used to the specific gravity scale and from the research I've done I think this could be the 'balling' scale...but really not sure. Could this be degrees Plato? Thanks for any help!

daxdefranco said:

Hi!

I'm brewing up my first batch in Europe as I type - it took me a while to get all the equipment together, but i've got it and it's finally brewday! I picked up a hydrometer at the (relatively) lhbs, pulled it out today and found this.

I'm brewing an ordinary bitter , nothing too crazy - and was expecting an OG of 1.034. When I took the pre-boil reading, this gave me '8' @60ºC - I'm used to the specific gravity scale and from the research I've done I think this could be the 'balling' scale...but really not sure. Could this be degrees Plato? Thanks for any help!

Click to expand...

It's Brix

Likely it is Brix (Balling, Brix and degrees Plato are pretty much interchangeable). This would give you a gravity of 1.031. My calculator shows 60C as 140F, so your temperature is too high (most hydrometers are calibrated to read wort around 15 deg C) you have to adjust for temperature. This brings your gravity to 1.047. Are you sure about that temperature? I'm not used to working with Celsius so I might be a bit off.

cluckk said:

Likely it is Brix (Balling, Brix and degrees Plato are pretty much interchangeable). This would give you a gravity of 1.031. My calculator shows 60C as 140F, so your temperature is too high (most hydrometers are calibrated to read wort around 15 deg C) you have to adjust for temperature. This brings your gravity to 1.047. Are you sure about that temperature? I'm not used to working with Celsius so I might be a bit off.

Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply. I'm not 100% sure of the temperature but i had just pulled it from the mash tun which was at ~62ºC when it finished. I usually correct for temperature pre-boil (as this measurement doesn't really matter, it's just to make sure I'm reasonably on target), but I only know how to do that on the specific gravity scale. I'm surprised by that high of gravity (1.047) also, and I assumed that was me reading the hydrometer wrong - but this is my first brew with this equipment so it could be the collected influence of a whole bunch of variables getting rowdy all at once.