Using shipping scale to measure volumes

Just wondering if anyone had used a shipping scale to measure volumes of water? You could measure water for strike, bring it up to temp do your mash and when it comes time to do sparge put your mash tun on the scale tare it out and release water from your HLT until you hit desired amount. If anyone has used this method what scale do you recommend?

Not for what you've described exactly, but we use one in the brewery all the time, like when pitching a certain volume of yeast out of a brink (basically a modified keg). Depending on the batch size, and volumes required, it might be rather heavy to lift your vessels. The other problem i see is that we know the weight of a gallon of distilled water, but the more stuff (i.e. sugar) you put in the water, the heavier it gets. Never looked to see how much of a difference that would make though.... It wouldn't be hard to figure out. It is something i worry about with our yeast though :/ but at least we're consistent there.

I've been wanting to get a scale for my homebrew system, so if you pull the trigger, let us know how it goes!

You can adjust volumes by using sg of a liquid so if the sg is 1.036 and you have 19kg of that liquid you would actually have 18.340L. Given that 1L of water at sg of 1.00=1KG. Does that seem correct?

MikeGillis said:

You can adjust volumes by using sg of a liquid so if the sg is 1.036 and you have 19kg of that liquid you would actually have 18.340L. Given that 1L of water at sg of 1.00=1KG. Does that seem correct?

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Are you doing batch or fly sparging? If you do a batch sparge, with a full run off before adding sparge water, there is no need to adjust for SG. After taring, all you will be weighing is the additional water. If you want to measure wort volume in the BK, then yes you need to divide the wt (in kg) by the SG to get volume (in L.) If you're going to be weighing your BK full of ~23 L of wort, you will need a scale with a capacity of 30 - 35 kg, depending on the weight of your BK.

Brew on

I've been using one for a year or two now. It works fairly well, you just have to ensure you're accounting for gravity as mentioned earlier.

You do have to keep an eye on it on occasion, since mine will time out and shutdown eventually.

Not on my 10 gallon system (sight glass),but I use my grain scale to weigh out the water for my Picobrew.

I'm doing batch sparge, but I would also like to use it to calculate bk volumes ie: loss during boil etc. Paired with a refractometer it should make it fairly easy.

I've been thinking of using a scale in my kegerator to tell me the volume left in my keg.

I just picked up a $20 shipping scale on Amazon to use for AG brewing. Should be good for weighing out grain, kegs, CO2 tanks and measuring water volumes. I don't intend to use it to measure wort (as others mentioned if you know SG it's an easy conversion), but for things like strike water, mashout water, etc. it will certainly be pretty foolproof. I do have a smaller kitchen scale that I'll still use for hops, sugars, DME, etc.