Weighing Hops

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mew

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How do y'all weigh your hops? It seems that to get sort of accuracy with hop additions such as .13 oz or the like, one would have to get a high-precision ($$$) scale. Is there some cheaper way I'm missing or are my increments just too strange?
 
I have an even cheaper analog postage scale.

Wnen formulating recipes I round to the nearest quarter ounce.

- magno
 
I'll have to look into these postage scales. Thanks.
 
Watch for inexpensive digital scales at your grocery store. Mine sells them for about $20. I got one on sale for $12, and it is accurate to 2 grams (about 0.07 oz). I even tried it with a standard weight set from work, and it was within a tenth of a gram for weights under 250 g.
 
try being a heretic and converting to metric for weighing hops, most scales (at least the ones over here) have the option of weighing ounces or grams. The ounce is usually broken into quarters and eighths with an expensive good set.
If you use grams (28 grams to the ounce roughly) then you have 28 increments or at the very least 14 (cheaper scales may go up 2g at a time, although all i've seen are 1g even the cheap sets), this gives you a lot more accuracy what ever way you cut it.
Just one more reason to join the rest of the world in the 21st century :p :p
 
I have a digital kitchen scale (one of the best investments in kitchen tools ever, imo) which weighs up to 11 lb. It is either metric or english units, with 1 gram accuracy...perfect for weighing hops. Metric is much nicer for weighing hops.
 
I use a reloading balance scale that measures in 0.1 grains and 1 oz = 437.5 grains. I think I'm accurate enough. ;)

I WILL get a digital scale, though... sometime.
 
i picked up a scale at bed bath and beyond for like 24 bucks on sale. Pretty good for one that measures down to the gram.
 
I have a really cheap plastic "diet" scale that's calibrated in ounces & grams. The hopper on it holds almost exactly an ounce of whole hops.
 
I bought a used digital laboratory balance on eBay, $95 including shipping, readability is 0.1 gram, weighs up to 5 kg, press the bar to zero it. I love it, fast accurate as hell. I checked it against our calibration weight from work. Weight is 2000.0 grams, balance read 2000.5 grams. Of course I'm a chemist so I'm obsessive. I used a triple beam balance for 20 years, but it is so slow...

I'm still waiting for the BATF to come knocking on the door asking questions about my need for lab equipment...
 
Reverend JC said:
i picked up a scale at bed bath and beyond for like 24 bucks on sale. Pretty good for one that measures down to the gram.

I also picked one up from Bed Bath and Beyond, but I'm not sure I like it.

I can take a reading of the exact same hops measurement and get two different numbers. Significantly different...maybe +/- 10%. It makes me very careful, so I end up weighing everything multiple times. I've tried the following things to sort this out:

1. Tried it with the weight of my plate zero'd and not zero'd. No difference.
2. Originally I was using a bowl. Moved to a plate for better distribution of weight on the scale. Plate is always centered. No difference.
3. Changing the units to metric, standard, oz, lbs, g, kg, etc. No difference.

I'm not really complaining, because the scale itself wasn't expensive. Just saying always weigh twice (at least) and dump once :D
 
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