How Accurately Do You Measure Your Ingredients ?

I started getting into home brewing with a friend of mine who has been brewing kits and some extracts for a year or so now and I've got a few extracts under my belt now. I've been reading many websites, books and any other sources of material I come across. Being that I work as an engineer I get pretty anal retentive about measurements as I design load cells and pressure transducers for a living typically with accuracy better then 0.02%

So I built to scales from some parts that didn't meet some customers full specs. I built one to weight grains and malt exctracts calibrated in pounds with an accuracy of 0.5% , so if I weight out 6lbs of extract the worst I could be off is +/- 0.03 lbs. I also made a scale that is calibrated in ounces to measure hops which is an accuracy of 0.1% so if I need 2oz of hops the worst I could be off is +/- 0.002 ounces.

Am I being to anal with my measurements? or is it a good habit to get into? Thoughts and opinions please

nah, i use a triple beam balance accurate to .01g. so no your not to anal bout it

You are joking, right? It's beer, not neurosurgery.

yea, I use two cheap little spring scales from wal mart. About 6 bucks each. I had them to weigh food when I was on a diet. They are probably off by a few grams here and their, but I don't worry about it. If I was working at a brewery I might, but homebrew? Nah. I seriously doubt you can taste a difference between 28 and 30 grams of hops at 60 minutes.

I have scales that measure to a gram but Ingriedints varie from batch to batch so I just use the measurements as a guide and for reference.

I could work from volume but I don't.
I know what 10 lbs of grain and one once of hops looks like.

I use a electronic scale used to measure refrigerants for refrigeration and air conditioning. Must be pretty accurate, use it to measure refrigerants for small self-contained units using 7 to 10 oz of refrigerant and haven't had a problem.

If I am within 5%, I am happy.

But then, half the time I don't even measure. "Hey, does that look like 1/2 pound of crystal to you?" Giterdone.

my grain on highly accurate wallyworld 9 buck model.
hops old 3 buck postal.

I use a typical "baker" style scale. It's more than accurate enough for me. Seeing that your crush is going to have a FAR greater effect on your end product than that extra .05 oz of grain, I don't sweat it too much.

I use our electronic postal scale. They seem to be close enough, the beers good.

Yah, you are fine guy. If you find a recipe you want to duplicate exactly batch after batch, year after year, your current scales are good enough for that too.

As has been said, lots of other places to gain or lose a little ground.

I understand completely. I'm a fairly serious baker, so I have a digital scale that would make Colombian drug lords envious

With that said, however, I generally adjust recipes so I don't have oddball amounts or a lot of orphaned leftovers that will just hang out in the fridge. Grains get rounded to the nearest quarter pound and hops to the nearest quarter ounce. Super potent ingredients like high alpha hops and chocolate/black malts are the exception. They get used in whatever amount is appropriate, measured to 1/10oz.

Chad

wow, I just round out to the nearest whatever I feel is appropriate, and then make sure I don't have any odd weights of grain I'll never use laying around.

The main thing is to use the same scale every time you brew. If you do this you will get consistent results.

The accuracy you have with your scales is way over the top but if that's what makes you happy then go for it and enjoy!

z987k said:

wow, I just round out to the nearest whatever I feel is appropriate, and then make sure I don't have any odd weights of grain I'll never use laying around.

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I with grains in 1 pound or less increments I also guess, I buy my grain online, and it comes in pound increments, so the base grain is fairly accurate, but if the recipe calls for 1/2 a pound of specialty grain or a 1/4 pound of specialty grain, I take the one pound sack and just guess as to the amount of grain.

With hops, I usually round up or down to the nearest 1/2 oz increment .75 = 1 ---- .25 = .5 and I usually just guess at 1/2 oz increments. I mean this is brewing, and variety is the spice of life.

Having watched a craft brewer just open a 50 lb sack of black patent and dump "about 1/4 of it" into his tun ...

I have an analog diet scale for anything under 1/2 Kg and my accuracy is the width of the needle. Grains I buy and weight at the LHBS. The scale is probably good to 5 grams, haven't looked at the specs.

Being a R&D chef for a restaurant chain, I'm pretty anal with my measurements and notes. I really don't think an ounce or two here and there is going to matter much to a beer but I do it so I can reproduce a brew.

After all my anal mesurements and notes, the trouble is there are too many brews I want to experiment with so I rarely end up brewing the same beer twice.

david_42 said:

Having watched a craft brewer just open a 50 lb sack of black patent and dump "about 1/4 of it" into his tun ...

I have an analog diet scale for anything under 1/2 Kg and my accuracy is the width of the needle. Grains I buy and weight at the LHBS. The scale is probably good to 5 grams, haven't looked at the specs.

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"about a quarter of it" ... that made me laugh. Gotta love brewers.

I think it's more important for the hops . I measure out all my ingredients exactly (according to what I am capable of resolving), that means grain to the exact weight (1/8 oz resolution) or hops (1 g resolution). But that's just because my scale allows for it. If I didn't have the scale, it could easily be eyeballed with fair results. But the process fiend in me says exact or nothing heh.

But the truth of it is that even if you weighed your grains out exactly every time, simply the variation in the grain itself will give you slightly (albeit probably unnoticeable) results every time. Same with hops, they take a sample from a set amount for AA. They don't test every single 1 oz bag they send out . So what it really comes down to is "what is good enough". I think that if you just try to be as consistent as possible it helps. Let's face it, we're not like Hershey chocolate factory where they blend all the beans by computer to get a consistency that is unmistakable .

In the end I think what could possibly be a more important issue would be keeping a consistent maltster, using the same strain of yeast in a recipe, ferment temp and mash temp are possible candidates that may prove more important than an 1/8 oz etc.

Also, thinking about this some more....it is more important to have a better degree of resolution when you are dealing with ingredients that have a higher potency. Like if you are adding some black patent, well an oz of that is going to have a much more noticeable effect on color (in particular) in a 5 gallon batch than say an extra oz of pils malt. Same with hops, an extra few grams of Simcoe may prove more noticeable than a few extra grams of Hallertau.

I measure dry yeast by the gram, hops to the nearest tenth of an ounce, and grain to within about 3%. I use a digital bathroom scale for amounts over 5 lbs, and it only measures to within half a pound. Most of the time I'm measuring 20-ish lbs of grain with it, though.

Try brewing with my stepdad sometime. He steeps a handful or two of Crystal malt in slowly heating water, removes it then dumps 7 lbs of LME into the water, then random handfuls of hops for the 60 and 5 minute boil.

Good beer too.

I'm easily defeated. If I was getting 75%+ efficiency and consistent beers, I would be far more observant. But as it is, I get 60% efficiency +/- 15%. I finally got my mash temps consistent but it hasn't helped with my extraction issues. As a result, I could care less about a tenth of an ounce of hops. Stuff I can't control is having more of an impact than I'd like. It's really not the time to focus on little measurements.

Maybe someday....

Well I think I'm going to continue on my route of being as accurate as possible. To be able to reproduce recipes as close as possible. Thanks for all the feedback

i pretty much eyeball it, worked for me granny's baked goods, and it works for me brews....

hop additions are by the handful in my sessions. grains i measure by scoopful, depending on the scoop.

I use a digital scale...enough said.

This is the scale I use. It does the trick nicely. Down to 1/4 gram