Liquid inside my hydrometer??

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ballsy

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Kegged my black IPA yesterday, and upon cleaning my hydrometer I noticed there is liquid inside of it, looks like water. It looks almost like condensation which has built up, roughly 2-3 ml of it down in the bulb. I have never dropped it & always babied it (I've had it since my start in 2013) so there is certainly no crack in it...I'm baffled as to how it got in there?? My wife is a biomedical engineer (aka smarter than me) and says you have to have moisture inside of it to begin with in order to have condensation form inside of it...anyone else ever have this happen?
 
Does the hydrometer still read 1.000 in distilled water at the calibration temperature?

If it does I still would not use it outside for a cold brew day when it is below freezing.
 
....so there is certainly no crack in it...I'm baffled as to how it got in there??
There has too be. How else would that much water have gotten in there.

My wife is a biomedical engineer (aka smarter than me) and says you have to have moisture inside of it to begin with in order to have condensation form inside of it.
She's right which means that the waer got in since you acquired the thing. For there to be a couple of mL water in the interior volume that volume would have to be about half a cubic meter.

That much water is probably about 10% of the mass of the hydrometer and will throw its readings completely off.
 
I'm no biomedical engineer, but it had to get in there somehow and if it wasn't there before then it must have gotten sucked in through a microscopic pin hole or something.
 
Well, confused how a pinhole got in glass without dropping it or banging it but alas something has happened and my hydrometer definitely is not reading right based on my water reading so guess time for #2! Glad such an inexpensive item lasted as long as it did. Thanks for the feedback.
 

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