How do you measure your water?

I feel really stupid asking this, but how do you all measure exact volumes of water? We are working our way from the steeping grains & extract kits into PM and AG. Playing around with Beersmith and from discussions here, I know that exact volumes of water are important. One recipe for a PM on Beersmith called for something like 5.94 quarts for mash, and sparge with 1.92 gallons (I am at my work, don't have Beersmith in front of me, so my memory may be wrong and the numbers may be way off).

What is the best way to measure exactly 5.94 quarts and 1.92 gallons (for example)?

To me, 1.92 gallons become 2 gallons. I round to the nearest half gallon.

Just round off the numbers. I don't get to worried about a few 100s. For 5.94 I would go to 6 and for 1.92 I would go to 2. You are over thinking on this.

EdWort said:

To me, 1.92 gallons become 2 gallons. I round to the nearest half gallon.

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That would make it easier. Having not done this before, I didn't want to make assumptions and take shortcuts that would seriously hurt the quality of the brews.

I try to round off to the nearest 1/4 gallon. Of course my measuring device is a giant wooden spoon, onto which I carved 1 gallon markings, so I don't get TOO hung up on precision!

For those of you with a sightglass on your HLT, how do you measure volume...with a scale on the side of the pot?

I got a 1/2 gallon pitcher at walmart for 2 bucks... makes life really easy...

+1 for rounding up

Growler calibrated to 1/2 gallon from a liquid measure.
Lots of dumping into my keg HLT/BK.
CPVC 'Dipstick' for measuring liquid level.

I need to tee a sight glass off of my bulkhead. I can see that's going to be key in the future.

BlindLemonLars said:

For those of you with a sightglass on your HLT, how do you measure volume...with a scale on the side of the pot?

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I marked my sightglass at every half gal, but the marks are so equal I could have gotten away with just marking every gal and estimating 1/4 and 1/2

I agree with the rounding & keeping it simple. However if you want to work in liquid ounces, consider this for converting quarts to ounces: Multiply the .94 in your 1.94 quart example by 32: 32 * .94 = 30.08oz. round it off to 30 & add the 1 from the whole quart, so: 1.94qt = 1qt, 30oz.
For the gallon do something similar. 128 oz = 1 gal. So 1.92 gal: .92 * 128 = 117.76. Round it to 118 and add the 1 from the whole gallon, so 1.92 gallons = 1gal, 118 oz.
I converted your above examples to liters, but the numbers also needed to be rounded off.
Usually we don't need to be too quantitative, so please keep it simple!