But a cacluclator will only tell you what it
should be but not what is happening under the hood of your fermenter. You'll still need to take a reading of
your beer, to know where it is at.
In Mr Wizard's colum in BYO this month he made an interesting analogy about brewing and baking....He said that egg timers are all well and good in the baking process but they only provide a "rule of thumb" as to when something is ready...recipes, oven types, heck even atmospheric conditions, STILL have more bearing on when a cake is ready than the time it says it will be done in the cook book. You STILL have to stick a toothpick in the center and pull it out to see if truly the cake is ready.....otherwise you may end up with a raw cake....
Not too different from our beers....We can have a rough idea when our beer is ready (or use something silly like the 1-2-3 rule (which doesn't factor in things like yeast lag time or even ambient temp during fermentation) and do things to our beer willy nilly....but unless we actually stick "our toothpick" (the hydrometer) in and let it tell us when the yeasties are finished...we too can "f" our beer up.
You have to get out of the mindset that using your hydromerer and taking the lid off your fementer, is a bad thing to do and is a last resort. It should be the first thing you grab, if you have any guestions about your beer, or what to do next...even before posting on here.
Don't fear using it, think of it as your "kemo sabe" your trusty friend
(sorry I watched the Lone Ranger last night.)