Anyone have a Hanna 96811 Digital Refractometer?

I recently acquired one. This is my first venture into refractometer waters. I have been reading through all the posts about refractometers and I understand that I will need to use formulas to compensate for beer sugar levels (versus wine sugar levels) and compensate for alcohol in the samples during fermentation. My questions are:

-Beyond initial calibration is there a formula that needs to be used during sparge sampling and boil?

-Once fermentation takes place I am aware that there are formulas that should be used to compensate for alcohol content. I see MoreBeer has an Excel sheet (http://morebeer.com/public/beer/refractbeer.xls) and I see that Sean Terrill has a spreadsheet (http://seanterrill.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/fg_calculator_v2.1.xls). Does anyone have a preference?

-Is there anything else I am missing in regards to general refractometer usage and/or Hanna-specific usage?


Cheers,
World

Yes I have one of these -- thanks Mom for the xmas present

You can use w/o compensation before you pitch. After that, the presence of alcohol will throw you off w/o a handy formula. I've use the MB spreadsheets for both beer and wine .

Also, when I first started using the digital, I stressed (have a home brew) a bit about readings that differed by 0.1-0.2% BRIX -- but this is really in the noise as it corellates to about .001 SG and the Hanna is accurate to .2% BRIX.