Making the Switch To Metric!

I take it a step further. Beings that I do 1 and 2gal batches I use grams for hops in beersmith, which I convert to grains and use my reloading scale to weigh hop additions. Way easier to measure such small quantities. Yes, I wash the bowl on the scale before I put hops in there! I also sanitize the bowl and use it to weigh out half packets of yeast.

Metric is easier only because so many values were designed around either 1x or 10x of another value under common conditions. For example, 1ml of pure water at standard temperature and pressure equals 1 gram and a cubic centimeter. Celcius temperatures measure based on the freezing and boiling points of water under the same conditions, other units were made to determine the amount of energy added to a given amount of water creating a change in temperature.

However, what so many metric users either don't know or have forgotten, is that "Standard" or "Imperial" Units predate an understanding of many scientific concepts, and instead measure the human interaction with the world- only some of them were inaccurate by virtue of their early measurements
For example, Fahrenheit degrees set zero at the freezing point of seawater (one of the coldest situations most people might ever encounter), and 100F was supposed to be internal temperature of a healthy human (instead of the modern citing of 98.6F).
Even ounces were supposed to be the same- a fluid ounce of water equals an ounce by weight, and therefore a pint equaling a pound... only the US eventually standardized it so it came out a little heavier, and the British government changed their measures several times, eventually adopting a pint 25% larger than was customary in the US, and keeping a gallon at 8 of these large pints. To make matters worse, the British government also insisted on using special measures for certain early pharmaceuticals and other industries.

In reality, the US has just stuck with workable human based units that it standardized fairly early in our national history, versus the rest of the world which has jumped several times to OTHER human-based units.

Unless the rest of the world is ready to make the jump to natural units (and if you don't know who Planck was, I doubt it), you really can't make a better case than "it's easier"

They can both be exactly as precise as needed in any given situation, and if you know the conversions, you can always do them- and I bet some of you metric users don't know all of your own unit conversions.

Lots of people don't seem to know the difference between accuracy and precision. Or that you can be as accurate AND precise as you want to be with any system of measurements.

Raenon said:

Unless the rest of the world is ready to make the jump to natural units (and if you don't know who Planck was, I doubt it), you really can't make a better case than "it's easier"

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Absolutely.

Planck's Pale SMaSH
208384382.85302 mP Vienna
1302402.3928314 mP Cascade @ 6.678341397 * 10^46 tP
1302402.3928314 mP @ 1.113056899 * 10^46 tP

Where do I buy my Planck scale at?

Raenon, the bit on Fahrenheit is off. Sea water freezes about -2ºC(28F) depending on salinity. You have the wrong salt.

According to an article Fahrenheit wrote in 1724, he based his scale on three reference points of temperature.[8] In his initial scale (which is not the final Fahrenheit scale), the zero point is determined by placing the thermometer in brine: he used a mixture of ice, water, and ammonium chloride, a salt, at a 1:1:1 ratio. This is a frigorific mixture which stabilizes its temperature automatically: that stable temperature was defined as 0 °F (−17.78 °C). The second point, at 32 degrees, was a mixture of ice and water without the ammonium chloride at a 1:1 ratio. The third point, 96 degrees, was approximately the human body temperature, then called "blood-heat".[10]
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit

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I disagree with the rest of it too, except you’re right about precision.

Wynne-R said:

Raenon, the bit on Fahrenheit is off. Sea water freezes about -2ºC(28F) depending on salinity. You have the wrong salt.

I disagree with the rest of it too, except you’re right about precision.

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Considering that I wrote that purely off the top if my head, I'm not too upset. Thanks for the link though

The rest you can disagree with, but that doesn't make it untrue- that's just your opinion.

I'm not exactly sure what there is to "convert" in metric units. There are grams, litres, metres. Representations of these units in pico,nano,kilo,mega is a different story

God yes yes yes! And I measure and calculate in degrees Plato as well. All the big kids are doing it! Ten grams of sugar in enough water to make one liter of solution is one degree Plato. Brix and Plato are the same thing.

Here's an example of conversions made unneccesary using the metric system. Say I want to increase the size of a recipe that is for five gallons. OK, I want to make 7 gallons of the recipe’s original amount to fill my "6 gallon" carboy that actually holds 6 2/5 gallons--allowing for substantial loss from the primary. Ok, so take 5 and divide it by 7 and that gives you the factor .71428. Five is 71.428 percent of seven (Percent! Damn that sounds metric!) You must divide all the recipe's numbers by this factor.

Why does the recipe call for an odd number like 6.6 lbs of DME? Maybe it was converted from the metric 3 kilos! So 6.6 is 71.428 percent of what? Take 6.6 lbs and divide by .71428, making it 9.24 lbs. How many ounces is .24 lbs? 16 ounces to the pound. Multiply 16 times .24 (grabs calculator); that’s 3.84 ounces. How much is .84 ounces? (converts to frickin grams to figure out--or says, hell with it, make it 4 ounces.) So 9 pounds 4 ounces for the malt, 8 ounces becomes 11.2 ounces of brown sugar (how many teaspoonfuls of brown sugar is .2 ounces?--goes up to kitchen grabs wife's cookbook with conversion tables, thumbs through to find weight of one tablespoon of plain sugar--close enough), and 12 ounces of crystal becomes uh,(grab the calculator) 16.8 ounces—(goes back up to kitchen checks cookbook, weighs one tablespoon full of crystal.) An ounce becomes 1.3989 ounces of chocolate malt (weighs a tablespoonful of chocolate malt, figures out how many grams in a tablespoon, figures out how many tablespoonsful equals .3989 ounces, eyeballs it because it is not an exact number of tablespoonfuls). 20 ABU (can I convert that to IBU?) boiling hops. 2/3 oz. flavor and aroma hops? 2 divided by 3 divided by .71428 Let’s see. .93333 ounces of hops. I’d better convert that so I can use my gram scale. One ounce equals 28 grams times .9333 equals 26.133. Make it 26. Et cetera, et cetera. With metric I calculate in liters and grams. 19 liters fills a 5 gallon carboy. A "6 gallon carboy" actually holds 24.5 liters. The conversion factor is .7755 Divide ALL metric ingredients by that factor alone and you get your new amounts. I converted to metric and I will never go back. Hell, the metric scales are right there on the common instruments anyway!

And by the way I went over and over those calculations above weeding out mistakes, and there might still be some in there!

I measure hops in grams instead of ounces because 1 gram is less than a tenth of an ounce; I can be more precise with my amounts. Or accurate. Whatever the case may be. Everything else I measure in the most jingoistic, flag-waving, I'm-Joe-McCarthy-and-I-approve-these-units-of-measurement that I can find, because they make sense to me without really having to think about what the numbers mean.

And as for "natural" systems, the meter is supposed to be one ten-millionth of the distance between the north pole and the equator, measured on the meridian that passes through Dunkirque. The survey team tried to triangulate their way from Dunkirque to Barcelona during the French Revolution, so it's understandable that they were off by one millimeter.

What's fascinating is that the argument boils down to what number system to go with. Imperial doesn't necessarily have a base in a system, while metric is in base 10... but all meaningful arguments for metric are on the side of the number system that it uses.

Base 10, however, is totally arbitrary! The only reason that it isn't base 11 or 12, or hex, is that they quit inventing characters at "9." 9x12, in base 12, is 90.

One could make an argument for the only "true" number systems to be the natural squares, cubes, etc of binary. This is why hexadecimal is relevant, anyway. It's a "short" form of binary.

Anyway, there's something magical about the word pint, and I would much rather sit and drink a pint than sit and drink a liter. Maybe it's just syllabic efficiency.

Molybedenum said:

Anyway, there's something magical about the word pint, and I would much rather sit and drink a pint than sit and drink a liter. Maybe it's just syllabic efficiency.

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The pint is fine and works quite well when set next to a liter,
but poetry requires just iambic pentameter.

I like metric because 157mm sounds a hell of a lot bigger than 6 inches. Yeah girls, you heard right, Metric Mike is in the house!

Lol... As a machinist I use either. Whenever I look at something I asses it's size in both. And that ain't 157 mm.

I had to switch to metric when I moved to Finland. No other choice. But I don't convert, I learned the metric system as for what it is, not what the conversion is. In the beginning I would always convert when going to the grocery store, pain in the arse. Now I know what 500g is, and i know what 23*C feels like. That and converting gas prices was doing my head in, when I changed the prices to US, $8.40 a gallon feels painful when I a putting gas in the car.

A word about pints: a pint its sell in the metric using countries too, a pint its served as half a liter of liquid and the rest its only foam... I've worked in bars all around the globe...

bottlebomber said:

As a machinist I use either. Whenever I look at something I asses it's size in both.

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I'm jealous. Been cutting metal for 40 years and metric is like having a chip in my finger. Easy to ignore until I touch something the wrong way. Converting a drawing from metric to imperial is an accident waiting to happen. To be able to think in both metric and imperial would be great, but my old brain just won't do it.



And don't get me started with drawings using Maximum Material Condition.

AnOldUR said:

I'm jealous. Been cutting metal for 40 years and metric is like having a chip in my finger. Easy to ignore until I touch something the wrong way. Converting a drawing from metric to imperial is an accident waiting to happen. To be able to think in both metric and imperial would be great, but my old brain just won't do it.


And don't get me started with drawings using Maximum Material Condition.

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.0393768? I hate scaling customer supplied drawings.

bottlebomber said:

Lol... As a machinist I use either. Whenever I look at something I asses it's size in both. And that ain't 157 mm.

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When working tool and die, the company was bought out by some French business. One of their engineers brings me a die pin for a mold and asks me to remove "three" off of it. I do my best to to turn .003 from the diameter of this hardened pin. Return it to him and he gets really heated. How was I to know he meant 3mm. The French are reason enough to stay clear of metric.

passedpawn said:

The pint is fine and works quite well when set next to a liter,
but poetry requires just iambic pentameter.

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I guess you like smaller things.

Pint vs 1/2-liter vs 1-liter.

MC

AnOldUR said:

I'm jealous. Been cutting metal for 40 years and metric is like having a chip in my finger. Easy to ignore until I touch something the wrong way. Converting a drawing from metric to imperial is an accident waiting to happen. To be able to think in both metric and imperial would be great, but my old brain just won't do it.


And don't get me started with drawings using Maximum Material Condition.

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GDT is a real drag on metric prints I will admit. I've seen some weird stuff coming up lately as well, such as instead of .625 +.0002/-.0002, it is 6248 +.0002/+.0004. Talk about accidents waiting to happen. Some of these engineers are downright sadistic.

maddad said:

.0393768? I hate scaling customer supplied drawings.

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I do a fair amount of that too. Sit down with the calculator, punch in X times 25.4 for half an hour. Even though about half of our prints are metric as still convert everything over usually because all of our inspection equipment is English. Having 3000 metric gauge pins in the mix would be lovely though I must admit.

maddad said:

When working tool and die, the company was bought out by some French business. One of their engineers brings me a die pin for a mold and asks me to remove "three" off of it. I do my best to to turn .003 from the diameter of this hardened pin. Return it to him and he gets really heated. How was I to know he meant 3mm. The French are reason enough to stay clear of metric.

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Remove three... Lol. The one nice thing about metric is being able to offset the machine in microns instead of tenths. Because when you're holding 1 tenth, it doesn't really work out when you can only move a tenth.

bottlebomber said:

GDT is a real drag . . .

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What's worse than spending hours multiplying by 25.4 is having a beautiful solid model of a part that you have to redraw because there's no way to use the CAD data and make a part within tolerance. I've spent half a day going over the toleranced PDF version of a file and redrawing the part so that the wire frame is in the center of the tolerance. Cursing at the engineer the whole time.

I remember when Jamil decided to switch to to Metric for the Jamil Show/ CYBI. He always talked about how much easier it was to scale down a commercial recipe because you can use percentages like grams/kilos.

That is all great, but I just don't see how it is "easier" to measure. I'd rather see 1 oz of hops on my digital scale than 28.3495 g on that same scale.

More importantly, and I am surprised that no one has mentioned it yet - every vendor I have used here in the US sells hops by the oz/lb. , and sell grain by the lb. So if you build your recipes in metric, you have to convert back to purchase the material in pounds and ounces. Doesn't that kind of defeat the point of "easy" measurement?

jfowler1 said:

That is all great, but I just don't see how it is "easier" to measure. I'd rather see 1 oz of hops on my digital scale than 28.3495 g on that same scale.

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you don't. You're thinking about using 1oz of hops versus using, say, 30g.

If a recipe is calling for 30g of hops, you'd have to measure 1.058oz of hops. Not any better is it?

Recipes are generally rounded to common measures, not being "translated" to their metric/imperial counterparts.

e.g. Jamie Oliver's bread recipe: http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/bread-recipes/basic-bread-recipe

MC

Misplaced_Canuck said:

you don't. You're thinking about using 1oz of hops versus using, say, 30g.

If a recipe is calling for 30g of hops, you'd have to measure 1.058oz of hops. Not any better is it?

Recipes are generally rounded to common measures, not being "translated" to their metric/imperial counterparts.

MC

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Naturally, everyone would round. But that still doesn't address my bigger point, that you would have to convert back to make your purchases. It would be moot if you stocked your own inventory in bulk, but not everyone (like me for instance) likes that option.

It’s not hard. I am equally comfortable using 10 lb or 4½ kg. But if I were doing any calculations on it I would switch it to standard units.

jfowler1 said:

Naturally, everyone would round. But that still doesn't address my bigger point, that you would have to convert back to make your purchases. It would be moot if you stocked your own inventory in bulk, but not everyone (like me for instance) likes that option.

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Well yeah, if you buy in pounds but brew in kg, you'll end up doing some conversion at some point. I buy in bulk and store the rest, and as long as I knew what weight in kg I had bought, it'd be fine.

In any case, I brew in imperial simply for the convenience that everybody else does.

MC

This thread has helped me realize that I should be measuring hops in grams. My digital scale either measures to the gram or to the tenth of an ounce. But a tenth of an ounce is almost 3 grams, so grams will provide me with more accuracy. Plus, I can inflate my numbers and instead of an IPA having around 4oz of hops, it has OVER 100 GRAMS!

TyTanium said:

We're America, the best country in the world. We do things our way and ain't no xeno gonna tell me how to measure my stuff.

Maybe the rest of the world are the dumb ones. They couldn't understand the nuance of our system so they settled for a super simple one.

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How do you quantify that statement? best at what? gun ownership? debt? largest military?

Metric is simpler to use. you can exchange units so much easier. weight, volume, distance etc all can be interchanged easily.

KISS Brew said:

This thread has helped me realize that I should be measuring hops in grams. My digital scale either measures to the gram or to the tenth of an ounce. But a tenth of an ounce is almost 3 grams, so grams will provide me with more accuracy. Plus, I can inflate my numbers and instead of an IPA having around 4oz of hops, it has OVER 100 GRAMS!

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Now now, measuring in grams will give the opportunity for more *precision*... The accuracy comes in when you hit your weights and addition times dead nuts on.:rockin:

KISS Brew said:

My digital scale either measures to the gram or to the tenth of an ounce. But a tenth of an ounce is almost 3 grams, so grams will provide me with more accuracy.

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So, all you're really saying is that your scale sucks!

KISS Brew said:

This thread has helped me realize that I should be measuring hops in grams. My digital scale either measures to the gram or to the tenth of an ounce. But a tenth of an ounce is almost 3 grams, so grams will provide me with more accuracy. Plus, I can inflate my numbers and instead of an IPA having around 4oz of hops, it has OVER 100 GRAMS!

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But my scale measures in lbs to 3 decimal places, which is more than twice as accurate as measuring in grams. Should I measure my hops in pounds?

-a.

I'm a proud Canadian! Our speed limit is 140kph, it's 26 degrees out right now and we measure our beer like this! Good, Not so good, and Not good at all!!

jfowler1 said:

- every vendor I have used here in the US sells hops by the oz/lb. , and sell grain by the lb.

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I think this is the best point I have read in this whole thread. Whatever system your local suppliers use is the one you should use. Any recipe you have can be converted using software. Arguing about the benefits of each system is a waste of time.

How many pentagrams in a fortnight? what's the multiplier for decalitre to hectare conversion?

When I start to think this thread is completely ridiculous (which it is), I take some comfort in suspecting that the NASA lunchroom has the same conversation, frequently.

Has anyone else noticed that everyone is using a decimal point in their imperial measurements.

Gab1788 said:

Has anyone else noticed that everyone is using a decimal point in their imperial measurements.

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Yes. If inch measurements were so precise why were they converted to a base 10 scale of "thou" when you needed the precision? Or create a "mil" thickness as 1/1000 of an inch?

Having grown up with metric, naturally I find it makes more sense to me. I have converted backwards and forwards for year between metric and imperial so I can visualize both on most occasions.

Ask me how many inches in a mile, and I'm going to struggle though.

IMHO metric becomes useful when talking small and large scale measurement, such as picolitres or megalitres. Much easier to represent fewer numbers with a scale prefix, than some huge number where you have to count the number of zeros. I.e gallons of water on earth. 320,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons versus 1260 exalitres

But each to their own

I still like to say I'm 6 foot tall

AnOldUR said:

So, all you're really saying is that your scale sucks!

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I was hoping this would fly under the radar.

ajf said:

But my scale measures in lbs to 3 decimal places, which is more than twice as accurate as measuring in grams. Should I measure my hops in pounds?

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Your logic seems sound to me

timbeer said:

Much easier to represent fewer numbers with a scale prefix, than some huge number where you have to count the number of zeros. I.e gallons of water on earth. 320,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons versus 1260 exalitres.

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ummm . . . 3.2 X 10^20