pH meter recommendations?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
I have the Hanna Meter as well, just be sure and order the storage solution I didn’t thinking it came with it.

It works like a charm and is super fast.

edit:
Kaiser, likes the Milwaukee meter. I looked into that one but liked the simplicity of the Hanna more. I have never used the one Kaiser recommends. Both the Hanna and Milwaukee are accurate to the recommened .01 range.
http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=PH_Meter_Buying_Guide
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I have the Hanna Meter as well, just be sure and order the storage solution I didn’t thinking it came with it.

It works like a charm and is super fast.

edit:
Kaiser, likes the Milwaukee meter. I looked into that one but liked the simplicity of the Hanna more. I have never used the one Kaiser recommends. Both the Hanna and Milwaukee are accurate to the recommened .01 range.
PH Meter Buying Guide - German brewing and more


I don't expect it to matter much for most of our purposes, but be careful with resolution (precision) vs accuracy. Per the manuals, the Hanna 98128 is accurate to +/- .05 (the 98128 model). The replacement for the SM101 is the MW101 (Low-Cost Portable pH/ ORP/ Temperature Meter - MW101 : Milwaukee Instruments) and is accurate to +/- .02.

http://www.hannainst.com/manuals/manHI_98127_98128.pdf

Low-Cost Portable pH/ ORP/ Temperature Meter - MW101 : Milwaukee Instruments
 
I'm in the same boat Yoop. Santa wants me to have one of these too. I'm sick of trying to determine the inaccurate color chart on my strips, and add the .3 low or what ever reading. AJ in the science section recommended the Hanna. I do like the small size, but really up in the air. I do like the Milwaukee that Kai uses. I also like the 9 volt battery life of 300 hrs. How can you go wrong with a Kai recommendation after all of his studies. I'm leaning toward the Milwaukee. :confused:
 
Hannah has a good name and the prices are similar enough to make price a non factor.

Still, that Milwaukee is a nice unit, and I like the remote head. But a replacement is $50, so it's almost the same as buying a whole new unit...

But the Milwaukee has a greater accuracy; .02 vs .05.

I like Kai's preference for manually calibrating. I've heard stories from people online about their testers refusing to calibrate. The manual mode prevents this.

I think the Milwaukee edges the Hannah for me.

Just remember to buy buffer and cleaning solution when you buy it too.
 
Just went trought this same decision, and due to a lot of bad reliability reviews on the milwaukee i purchased the hanna. Check amazon for some reviews. Im sure they are both good meters, but the hanna seems to get better reliability reviews.
 
I nearly bought my hanna from Eseason gear, but I checked out their policies and read some shady reviews. A bit worrisome for me. From eSeasonGear FreeShipping! :

-You may return the item back in brand new condition, unopened, untested, and in the original box for a refund (or an exchange for the same item) within THREE (3) days after the delivery date (please check out the none-returnable items listed below). Please include all original packaging material, free bonus, and a copy of the packing slip. The buyer is responsible for the return shipping fee.
-CHARGEBACKS: We will report all CHARGEBACKS to www.badcustomer.com & Chargeback Protection :: Free Protection Against Chargeback to prevent charge-back abuse! Your order emails will be sent to your bank and that may affect your CC rating. If you filed charge back and kept the item, your personal information may be posted on the Bad Buyer List and you could be put on the First Page of Google.

-A 25% Restocking Fee will be charged for new items returned. We check each new item returned carefully before we put it back in stock.

Between those and no phone number on their website I ended up ordering from another retailer. YMMV.
 
Whatever flips your pancakes.

I think potential buyers should know this before ordering. Everything will likely go fine. But IF you have a problem, you have 3 days to return with a 25% chargeback. No policy on defective items that I could find. No number to call and ask them. And if you end up needing to charge back they will blackball you and list your name on the web. Not the most customer oriented policies IMHO.

Add to this that the meters are available for similar pricing elsewhere, and I see no compelling reason to order from them.
 
I've had the Hanna Checker pH meters for years and they are fine. I just upgraded to the Milwaukee MW-101 this year and like it even better. It has everything a brewer needs, redimentary temperature correction and high pH resolution. The MW-102 is a step up, but its features don't add anything to the brewer's input. The MW-100 has too little pH resolution and that makes it marginal for brewing usage.

I picked up a MW-101 for under $80 shipped.
 
I ordered one hanna and it was defective out of the box (from b3). It leaked.

The replacement from amazon works perfectly, and actually came with much more than the B3 package (storage case, solutions, etc).

Martin, does the mw-101 need to have the temperature manually adjusted with every sample (and thus needing an accurate thermometer for the measurements)? Im still confused about ATC.
 
Depends on how many Shekels Bob wants to spend. Check Grainger. If you decide on a tester. Find one that does TDS and can be used with a water test kit. Just in case you'd like to check the water for iron, sulfer etc.. I think Hanna has a complete water test kit with meter for about three C notes.
 
You don't chase a pH value into the hundreths, but you do observe the overall pH with respect to its output at the tenths level. When you have a meter that can only report to the tenths of a standard unit, you won't know your result within a twentieth of a unit. For instance, if you're looking for a pH of about 5.4 and the meter reads 5.3, you don't know if you're off by 0.05 or 0.15 units. With a meter that reads hundreths, you can have a little more confidence in what the actual 'range' of the reading is.

As mentioned above, the pH of the wort will vary with time. This is especially true if the sample is cooling while you measure its pH. Its very helpful to see the pH reading when you have a resolution in the hundreths as it varies and settles into a relatively narrow range. Using a meter with a resolution of only a tenth is going to prematurely show you that the sample measurement has stabilized when it may not have.

By the way when I report my pH readings, its typically only to the tenth of a standard unit. The hundreths are just for extra surety in interpreting the reading.

Do yourself a favor and don't short change yourself by picking up a meter with insufficient resolution.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Have you ever used a pH meter?. Getting down to two decimal places is over kill.. and can change in five minutes.. you'll be chasing that number unless you load up on buffers.

No, it's definitely not. The desired range of mash pH is 5.3 - 5.5. At 0.1 resolution that's 3 bins. How are you going you going to make meaningful fine adjustments within that range? And what does loading up on buffers have to do with it? Anyone using a pH meter must "load up" on buffers and use them every day he uses the meter as a minimum.

As for "chasing" the readings - that's quite important as it takes time for the reactions which establish mash pH to go to completion and it is only at that time that one should read the meter. Watching the drift over time tells you when that time is. Some of the more expensive meters keep track of this for you automatically e.g. beep and freeze the display when the electrode voltage variation settles out. These are typically working with a resolution of about 0.0017 pH (0.1 mV).

Two decimal place resolution is much preferred to 1 as it puts the quantizing noise at 0.003 pH which is well below the fundamental accuracy limitation of ±0.02 pH attainable with spanning (4 and 7) ±0.02 pH technical buffers. This represents good system design i.e. the instrument resolution contribution to inaccuracy is insignificant. For 0.1 pH resolution the quantizing noise is 0.03 - greater than the buffer limitation. This represents poor system design.

But this would be moot if we didn't need more than 1 decimal place accuracy but we do or at least benefit from it. One decimal digit with a cheap pH meter is better than the 0.5 decimal digit available from test strips but not as good as the implied 1.3 digits available from a meter with 0.05 pH accuracy (the limit I would recommend for brewing) which is in turn not as good as the 1.7 digits implied by a meter with resolution of 0.01 but accuracy of 0.02 as detemined by the buffers.

Now if your comment about chasing pH readings means that you are finding reading unstable in situations where the true pH is known to be stable (i.e. in a buffer at constant temperture). Then there is a problem with the meter and or electrode. Most commonly the problem is a clogged junction but as meters age their response slows especially in brewing where protein deposition is a potential problem. In low ionic strength situations electrical noise from static buildup/discharge can be a problem. There are solutions to all of these.
 
I'm not sure what NIST calibration would do for you with a pH meter. That might be valid for a short while. But as the probe ages, the calibration goes out the door. You really have to perform calibration checks on a daily basis to make sure that the meter electronics haven't shifted and the probe chemistry and function is still correct.
 
Is there any advantage to ordering with the 'NIST' calibration certificate for $13 more?

What does 'NIST' stand for? Nice Idea for Skinning the Turkeys? I'd stay away from this outfit. I have never seen NIST calibration offered for a pH meter and to even suggest such a thing for a device with 0.1 pH specified accuracy seems a cruel joke. And I can't imagine what it would even mean. A pH meter is basically a sensitive volt meter but one doesn't need to have an absolute voltage calibration on the thing because the user must calibrate it himself before every use. It is recommended that he use NIST traceable buffers and so I can only imagine that it means they do a calibration using NIST buffers before shipping which would be worthless because you would have to recalibrate it yourself the first time you used it.
 
NIST stands for National Institute of Standards and Technology. Its third party proof that the tester is meeting the accuracy claims by the manufacturer. If you are an ISO9000 facility you are required to have this on any equipment you use, if you dont know what it is you do not need it as it does not do anything to the accuracy of the instrument.
 
That's not true. I don't know what the NIST calibration standard calls for but I would assume that a check on the accuracy/linearity of the RTD and a check on the linearity of the A/D are involved (offset isn't so important here because that would get calibrated out). Both of those effect the accuracy of pH meter readings. But on an 'instrument' with an 0.1 pH accuracy spec?

[Edit] Another thing I'd really like to see verified is the isoelectric pH of electrodes. I wonder if they do that in NIST certification (of real meters which costs about $150 - not the ridiculous $19 'NIST certification' for the $69 meter). The reason I'm hard over on it is that I once bought an expensive electrode that had an isoelectric pH way out of spec. The electrode is perfectly useable (I've had it for years) but I have to do cal/pH/ATC in my own software which works with arbitrary pHi.
 
If you are worried about accuracy, you would not buy a $75 ph meter in the first place. NIST traceability is simply comparing the readings of the ph meter to a calibration standard (this standard is traceable all the way back to the gov't NIST labs) and verifying that the instrument is as accurate as the specs say its supposed to be. There is no standard accuracy that the NIST labs say all PH testers must meet. A NIST cert is not a calibration of the device.
 
Yoop, did you end up getting that Milwaukee 56? How do you like it? Seem to work well for you?

Well, I like it, in that it's easy to use. But I have had some troubles with it. They've replaced the electrode twice, and I sent it in once to them. They haven't charged me, but it came back last week and I used it. I calibrated it, and within a couple of minutes it was drifting again, pretty badly. I calibrated it again, and it seemed ok then. If I had it to do over, I would have chosen a different meter.
 
I was thinking about buying one, but I'm not sure how much of an improvement it would be over the ColorpHast pH strips I have now. I know Kai's done some work showing that the strips aren't all that accurate, but I'm not sure if any of the meters in this price range are much better.
 
Back
Top