ursa_minor
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- Jul 29, 2015
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It's almost time for me to bottle my annual christmas beer, and I took a gravity reading today for the first time in a few months (it's a spiced quad that I brew over the summer and age). The last time I took a gravity reading I just used the refracto and I was getting a reading in the 1.050 range, which struck me as way too high (primary had finished long ago), but I didn't bother to get a second opinion from the hydrometer.
Today the hydrometer reads something like 1.012, while the refracto is reading around 1.040. I checked and the refractometer reads 1.000 for pure water, so it's not simply that it's out of calibration. The beer tastes a lot more like 1.012 than 1.040. Any idea what might be going on? The beer is a belgian quad brewed with a lot of candi sugar, and it's quite dark - might one of these be a factor in giving a skewed refractometer reading? Alternatively, would there be factors leading the hydrometer to be way off-target? The beer came up from the cellar where the temp is probably in the low 60's, so my recollection of how temperature affects hydrometer readings means that this shouldn't be more than a couple of points off of true.
Today the hydrometer reads something like 1.012, while the refracto is reading around 1.040. I checked and the refractometer reads 1.000 for pure water, so it's not simply that it's out of calibration. The beer tastes a lot more like 1.012 than 1.040. Any idea what might be going on? The beer is a belgian quad brewed with a lot of candi sugar, and it's quite dark - might one of these be a factor in giving a skewed refractometer reading? Alternatively, would there be factors leading the hydrometer to be way off-target? The beer came up from the cellar where the temp is probably in the low 60's, so my recollection of how temperature affects hydrometer readings means that this shouldn't be more than a couple of points off of true.
