Am I just lucky...?

I see a lot of people talking about drinking the beer taken out of a batch for a gravity reading. I see a lot of others talk about how much beer is wasted by taking gravity readings.

Have I been doing this wrong and just getting lucky that nothing bad has happened?

I have a Fermtech wine thief and I dip it in the fermenter, drop the hydrometer in the thief, check the numbers and then release the beer back into the fermenter. Of course, I sanitize the thief and hydrometer thoroughly before doing this.

I was pretty sure that was the whole point of the design of the Fermtech thief.

Is this a terrible risk I'm taking? Does everybody else just RDWHAHB (i.e. get drunk) a lot more than me before they take samples? Or is everybody just way paranoid and freaked out by the infection pictures people post?

Some people like being able to taste the progression of the beer through the process.

Your technique is sound.

I personally try to mess with it as little as possible. I just give it a 2-3 weeks, then check gravity once and keg if it's good to go.

lol,have a try

Like AZ IPA said, nothing wrong with your technique.

Some people get in a hurry and end up taking a fg MANY times. Also, others take out more beer than they need. I believe this is the waste that you hear of.

I have a thief like yours. I wait at LEAST two weeks before checking a gravity, and rarely have to do it more than twice.

I DO believe in tasting the beer to gauge its progress. The amount lost is just a few ounces, and the knowledge gained is worth it.

Pez.

EDIT - concerning infection - You DO pose a higher risk of infection returning the beer to the fermenter. However, if you sanitized everything well, this risk is very, very small. The thief is actually designed for wine, and I'm assuming the much higher alcohol content makes infection less likely.

I'm not one of those people that check their gravity like 10 times for one batch. I give my beer 2-3 weeks to ferment and I usually only check the gravity once and that's on the day I intend to bottle. I usually drink the sample since I want to taste the beer anyway, but if your practice is sound and you don't splash the beer around, you're probably just fine.

Is drinking the sample technically considered "wasting" it?

OG2620 said:

Is drinking the sample technically considered "wasting" it?

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Only if you have to do it alot.

Wow, thanks for the responses. It's good to know that I'm not doing anything too weird. I guess people that do the same type of thing just don't mention it as much as the people that don't return the sample to the fermenter. Either that, or I haven't noticed it when they mention it.

And I understand wanting to taste the beer throughout the process to understand things a bit more. I guess I just hadn't realized that I could release a bit of the sample into a glass for tasting and then the rest of it back into the fermenter. Duh. Maybe I'll start doing that every once in a while.

signpost said:

Wow, thanks for the responses. It's good to know that I'm not doing anything too weird. I guess people that do the same type of thing just don't mention it as much as the people that don't return the sample to the fermenter. Either that, or I haven't noticed it when they mention it.

And I understand wanting to taste the beer throughout the process to understand things a bit more. I guess I just hadn't realized that I could release a bit of the sample into a glass for tasting and then the rest of it back into the fermenter. Duh. Maybe I'll start doing that every once in a while.

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Do it the other way around. Release most of the beer back into the fermenter, saving enough to dispense into a glass. That way you don't have to sanitize the glass also.

It takes so little for read a sample. I personally don't see the need to put it back. Sometimes I take a taste, but the rest just goes down the drain. I won't miss 1/3 glass of beer in a 5 gallon batch.

Pezman1 said:

Do it the other way around. Release most of the beer back into the fermenter, saving enough to dispense into a glass. That way you don't have to sanitize the glass also.

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Ah yes. One step ahead of me.

I figure there is enough that gets lost when racking into the bottling bucket and then I never get everything from the bucket into the bottles. And of course some is absorbed by dry hops when those are used. Am I gonna cry over a little lost beer? No. But I'm also not going to just toss it out because I wasn't willing to sanitize my equipment. A little bit here. A little bit there. It adds up.