I did my 1st all grain yesterday and ran into a couple of problems.
I brewed a low gravity beer with a small grain bill, Northern Brewer AK47 Pale Mild. It uses ~5.5lbs grain and then a pound of sugar at the end of boil.
I fly sparged in a 10gal cooler (which seems to be too little grain for this size cooler, but that's another post...). I wanted to test the SG of the runnings with my hydrometer, so that I wouldn't go under 1.010. The problem is the wort was just too hot, I placed it in the freezer for a while, but it took too much time to cool. By the time the sample cooled, about 7 minutes, I noticed I would be well under 1.010, which I was about ~ 1.005.
Is there a better way to do this?
I read on here a couple of times that people recommend mixing the sample with 50% very cold R/O water, adjust the reading for the sample temperature and then multiplying the result by two. I like this idea, the only issue I see is that it will increase your margin of error on the reading by 2X. I think anything under a 50% wort sample would increase the margin of error too much and not give you a close enough reading (i.e. 1/3 wort 2/3 H2O). What does everybody think about this method?
The other idea would be to purchase a refractometer, but this has mixed reviews on HBT (please don't turn this into a refractometer vs. hydrometer thread), just let me know if this is your vote.
Thanks to all!
I brewed a low gravity beer with a small grain bill, Northern Brewer AK47 Pale Mild. It uses ~5.5lbs grain and then a pound of sugar at the end of boil.
I fly sparged in a 10gal cooler (which seems to be too little grain for this size cooler, but that's another post...). I wanted to test the SG of the runnings with my hydrometer, so that I wouldn't go under 1.010. The problem is the wort was just too hot, I placed it in the freezer for a while, but it took too much time to cool. By the time the sample cooled, about 7 minutes, I noticed I would be well under 1.010, which I was about ~ 1.005.
Is there a better way to do this?
I read on here a couple of times that people recommend mixing the sample with 50% very cold R/O water, adjust the reading for the sample temperature and then multiplying the result by two. I like this idea, the only issue I see is that it will increase your margin of error on the reading by 2X. I think anything under a 50% wort sample would increase the margin of error too much and not give you a close enough reading (i.e. 1/3 wort 2/3 H2O). What does everybody think about this method?
The other idea would be to purchase a refractometer, but this has mixed reviews on HBT (please don't turn this into a refractometer vs. hydrometer thread), just let me know if this is your vote.
Thanks to all!