refractometer

Do all refractometers work in the same way? I went and bought a refractometer off e-bay after Bobby pumped them up. Except I bought one that gave the s.g. instead of just brix for ease of using. When I got it today it says salinity. I have not tested it against my hydrometer yet. Just curious if anyone has any insight about this.

sakalmon said:

Do all refractometers work in the same way? I went and bought a refractometer off e-bay after Bobby pumped them up. Except I bought one that gave the s.g. instead of just brix for ease of using. When I got it today it says salinity. I have not tested it against my hydrometer yet. Just curious if anyone has any insight about this.

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The scale is designed to measure salinity, not sucrose, so your readings will be off. You could probably come up with an equation to convert to Brix or SG, but it would be easier to just get a refractometer that was designed to do that job in the first place. Well - even a brix refractometer will be off by about 4-6% because it's not just water a sucrose, but that correction is fairly easy to do.

See https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/did-i-get-wrong-one-10521/

Refractometers read disolved solids. Any disolved solids as far as I know. Whether it is wort, salt water or urine. Brix is a different scale. One can be converted to the other. The scale of your refractometer needs to be in the range of what we are reading. I have some that read from 0 to .016, not real useful in brewing. Yours should work if it has both SG and salinity. If not you will have to find a way to convert the salinity scale to SG.

Hope this helps.

Mine has SG on one side. Is SG the same measurement whether it is salt or sugar?

Yes. Specific Gravity is not substance specific.

Then maybe someone can help me with this issue.

Thanks in advance for any help.

My apologies if I was wrong - please post your calibration results as you get them, OP, to clarify this once and for all.

Someone has gone to a great deal of trouble to explain a lot of this here

to the OP:

I use my aquarium refractometer, and use this calculator to convert to SG for the OG of my wort.
SaltyZoo's Salinity Conversion (Specific Gravity / PPT)

Paco, Calibrate your refractometer with something other than DI water. You should use a known calibration solution.

It's a long read, especially for a non-aquarium person, but it has a lot of good points.
Reef Aquarium Salinity: Homemade Calibration Standards by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com

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