What do you use to measure water??

As I continue my journey towards all grain, and putting my brewery together I am looking at so many options for so many parts of the process. One that hasn't become perfecly clear yet is an accurate way to measure mash/strike/sparge water.

So, what do you use? Measuring cup (or other device), weight, sight glass, other??

How accurate do you think your method is, and how does it affect heat loss or any other issues?

I have a 2qt pitcher that I use to fill the HLT and to vorlauf. I don't worry much about exact volume or L:G ratio and instead focus on mash temp, duration and pH.

Lines on the side of the pot. Measure it per gallon once and you'll never need to do it again.

I have a large pitcher with graduations on it for the volume of water in it

here is a link to one that looks the same !

Housewares-Plus - Your home for housewares at reasonable prices - Misc. :: Plastic Pitchers :: 1 Gallon Plastic Pitcher

graduations in my round cooler to measure strike and sparge volumes, 2 qt pyrex measuring cup for vorlauf and generally moving liquid around.
1.4 inches = 1 gallon in my keggle

Ceedubya said:

So, what do you use? Measuring cup (or other device), weight, sight glass, other? How accurate do you think your method is, and how does it affect heat loss or any other issues?

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These cheap red one gallon paint buckets from HD work well for measuring, mixing small batches of sanitizer and storing brew stuff. They are graduated in quarts (I used a Sharpie to highlight the numbers.) I heat strike water on the stove in a 5 gallon pot and use these buckets to fill it. Not 100% accurate, but close enough. Have a BobbyM sight glass on the HLT used for sparging.

I used weighed out water to graduate the sight glass on the converted keg boil kettle and HLT.

1 gallon pitcher. A scale isn't a bad idea though since it wouldn't have to be that accurate, a cup is about 1/2lb.

Used Milk Jug! I'm Ghetto!

Calibrated site tubes

+1 here on the milk jug!

Sight glass calibrated by weight and for the dead space. In other words, when I fill the sight glass to 3 gallons, there is actually a little more than 3 gallons in the pot, but 3 gallons is what will come out if I open the valve and let it drain until it stops.

Ceedubya said:

How accurate do you think your method is, and how does it affect heat loss or any other issues?

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Site Glass (HLT & Kett, graduated (?) .5 gal marks), within a cup (to graduation(?)), no heat lost through sight glass.

I use deductive reasoning to determine my strike volumes into MLT.

Semi-transparent 5 gallon plastic bucket with 1/4 gallon marks on the side. I compared the marks to the contents of a 1 gallon jug and it's pretty darn accurate.

Fermenting buckets. They already have the gallon markings on the side starting at 2g with 1/2g increments.

I use a cooking pot that is 8 qts and has factory etched marks on the inside marking the qts 1-8.

Fermenting buckets. They already have the gallon markings on the side starting at 2g with 1/2g increments.

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I have found these to potentially be very inaccurate. On my bottling bucket the line @ 1 gal is about right but the error increases as you go up to 4 gal where the error is the largest...then at 5 gal it's actually very close again. So my bottling bucket would be reasonably close if I measure 5 gal but very far off if I measure 4 gal.

I use weight with a bathroom scale. I have no idea how accurate the scale is, but it is at least as accurate the measures on the fermenter buckets since I always nail my fermenter volume dead on.

The first time I did my AG, I measured the liquid going into my brew pot, and scratched graduated marks in my brew spoon paddle by gallons - 3 - 7. I do not have to measure any more.

Dan

i use gallon growlers which i calibrated and a pyrex 1 quart measuring cup...works great

My $3.26 sight gauges...

A spoon calibrated for our keggles in 1 gallon increments. Calibrated our carboys with tape to measure the final bacth volume.

I didn't mind using calibrated buckets when I was doing a lot of pouring but once I got into 10g batches in the kegs, I went with sight glasses and haven't looked back.

I use a 3 ft. piece of stainless square stock about a 1/2" wide by 1/8" thick as a dip stick. I marked off the stick at quarts and then punched numbers into it.