No Scale and I need to weigh out my hops. Help!

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Blueberryspies

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My digital scale has broken and I am in the middle of brew day as we speak and still need to weigh out my hops.

I was hoping someone could tell me roughly how much of cup of hops (both whole leaf and pellet) weigh in ounces, so I can have a rough idea of how much hops I'm adding.

Thanks
 
1/4 cup (the only measuring cup i could find) weighrd in at 1.2 oz for pellet hops

EDIT: I'm glad you made me do that, that's quite handy to know!! :D
 
Good lord, well if I had to guess, I would say roughly 4oz of hops in a cup. I'm basing this on the fact that I separate my hop additions out into 1 cup tupperware containers when I brew and even the 2oz additions only fill it about halfway.

Edit: this is for pellet hops, btw.
 
fococlimber said:
hops usually when bought come in 1 or 2 oz bags... do you remember what you bought?
Click to expand...

I would just eyeball it this time around, but you could improvise a balance scale using a ruler or a dowel maybe. A nickel weighs about 5 grams. Use them as the counterweights. Suspend the dowel and hang a couple of zip lock bags from the ends with fish line or other string. You should be able to figure out the rest. This is a trick I learned in my hippie days for weighing out incense and stuff.
 
Make a balance scale and use coins for reference weights.
EDIT: missed it by that much...
 
Catt22 said:
I would just eyeball it this time around, but you could improvise a balance scale using a ruler or a dowel maybe. A nickel weighs about 5 grams. Use them as the counterweights. Suspend the dowel and hang a couple of zip lock bags from the ends with fish line or other string. You should be able to figure out the rest. This is a trick I learned in my hippie days for weighing out incense and stuff.
Click to expand...

Skunk sticks?
 
Catt22 said:
I would just eyeball it this time around, but you could improvise a balance scale using a ruler or a dowel maybe. A nickel weighs about 5 grams. Use them as the counterweights. Suspend the dowel and hang a couple of zip lock bags from the ends with fish line or other string. You should be able to figure out the rest. This is a trick I learned in my hippie days for weighing out incense and stuff.
Click to expand...

This is a great reply on so many levels.

- Quick response. Blueberry needed help and got it from Catt22 and others within 10 or 11 minutes. Kudos, fellow brewers.
- Practical application of basic physics to a real-life, time-sensitive issue. Knowing what we do about how gravity works, and some basic reference data (weight of a nickel), we can apply math to model/solve the problem. Man triumphs over his environment and circumstance through knowledge and sharing.
- Pattern recognition. Catt22 may not have faced this exact problem when brewing, but recognized a similar conundrum from his past experience, and applied his learning to this new circumstance. By sharing, we all learn.
- We are also graced with a clever turn of phrase. :)
 
graybeard said:
This is a great reply on so many levels.

- Quick response. Blueberry needed help and got it from Catt22 and others within 10 or 11 minutes. Kudos, fellow brewers.
- Practical application of basic physics to a real-life, time-sensitive issue. Knowing what we do about how gravity works, and some basic reference data (weight of a nickel), we can apply math to model/solve the problem. Man triumphs over his environment and circumstance through knowledge and sharing.
- Pattern recognition. Catt22 may not have faced this exact problem when brewing, but recognized a similar conundrum from his past experience, and applied his learning to this new circumstance. By sharing, we all learn.
- We are also graced with a clever turn of phrase. :)
Click to expand...

I see someone is going to fit in well here. :)
 
graybeard said:
This is a great reply on so many levels.

- Quick response. Blueberry needed help and got it from Catt22 and others within 10 or 11 minutes. Kudos, fellow brewers.
- Practical application of basic physics to a real-life, time-sensitive issue. Knowing what we do about how gravity works, and some basic reference data (weight of a nickel), we can apply math to model/solve the problem. Man triumphs over his environment and circumstance through knowledge and sharing.
- Pattern recognition. Catt22 may not have faced this exact problem when brewing, but recognized a similar conundrum from his past experience, and applied his learning to this new circumstance. By sharing, we all learn.
- We are also graced with a clever turn of phrase. :)
Click to expand...

I don't know who said it originally, but I always thought this to be an excellent quote:

"No one knows more than all of us". The power of the interwebs has taken this to extreme heights and all at our fingertips for the looking or asking.
 
Laughing_Gnome_Invisible said:
I'm guessing weed weighs similar to hops. How much weed in a baggie?
Click to expand...

A bag of week is traditionally supposed to be about 1 oz, however, the reality was that you would handle the bag, spread it out some and make a judgement call. Few of us hauled scales around with us and in a pinch, you sometimes just had to bite the bullet. More often than not, it was a fair deal as you normally knew the seller or someone you knew did. I never bought anything from complete strangers. That was much too dangerous for my liking.
 
also if you want to do a calibration on your scale to make sure its right(other then zeroing it out). Or you can do this with a ruler with a fulcrom point. 3 pennies = 1oz.
 
Catt22 said:
A bag of week is traditionally supposed to be about 1 oz, however, the reality was that you would handle the bag, spread it out some and make a judgement call. Few of us hauled scales around with us and in a pinch, you sometimes just had to bite the bullet. More often than not, it was a fair deal as you normally knew the seller or someone you knew did. I never bought anything from complete strangers. That was much too dangerous for my liking.
Click to expand...

My weeks weigh much more heavily than a single, solitary ounce. In fact, they can weigh so heavily they can become crippling.

Makes me wish sometimes i still smoked weed or even had a clue where to acquire any. Another life, another time.
 
Arneba28 said:
also if you want to do a calibration on your scale to make sure its right(other then zeroing it out). Or you can do this with a ruler with a fulcrom point. 3 pennies = 1oz.
Click to expand...

That makes no cents.:D Your pennies must be a lot heavier than mine. It takes 11 pennies for an ounce on my scale. Actually, 11 weighed in at 0.995 oz. Most pennies are copper plated zinc, but occasionally you will find one of the older pennies that really are mostly copper. I did not bother to check the specific gravity of zinc vs copper. I'm pretty sure the ones I used were all of the zinc variety.
 
Catt22 said:
That makes no cents.:D Your pennies must be a lot heavier than mine. It takes 11 pennies for an ounce on my scale. Actually, 11 weighed in at 0.995 oz. Most pennies are copper plated zinc, but occasionally you will find one of the older pennies that really are mostly copper. I did not bother to check the specific gravity of zinc vs copper. I'm pretty sure the ones I used were all of the zinc variety.
Click to expand...


The older pennies will be heavier than the newer ones. The only coin you should use new or old to check a scale for calibration is a nickel. A nickel weighs exactly 5 grams.
 
Toga said:
The older pennies will be heavier than the newer ones. The only coin you should use new or old to check a scale for calibration is a nickel. A nickel weighs exactly 5 grams.
Click to expand...

The older copper pennies would be about 25% heavier than the newer zinc ones. That would not explain the discrepancy in the 3 pennies = 1 oz suggested in one of the above posts. Those three pennies would need to be something like 367% heavier to equal the 11 zinc ones I weighed out. Even if the three pennies were solid gold, they would only weigh about 3/4 oz. I see no reason why most any coin, or combination of coins could not be used so long as you knew their weights. The scale I bought came with a 200 g certified calibration weight, so I don't need to fool around with coins.

It's all good though. We got the boy through in a pinch and that's what counts.:D
 
Catt22 said:
I don't know who said it originally, but I always thought this to be an excellent quote:

"No one knows more than all of us". The power of the interwebs has taken this to extreme heights and all at our fingertips for the looking or asking.
Click to expand...

I love this thread, but I always thought that quote was more like this:
http://www.despair.com/meetings.html
 

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