Infrared temp gun

[thyirishmen]

Has anyone thought about using one of those infrared temp guns to take temp readings?

 

[wilserbrewer]

I have read that they are not applicable for our applications, never tried one, but my guess is you will not be happy.

 

[kblankenship11]

I spent enough money at ThermoWorks to get a free one. I read the details on it and it says it is accurate within 7 degrees. Not good enough for mashing, but close enough to give you a general idea with chilling, boiling etc. It also just gives you the reading of the top of the surface, which can vary from the middle/bottom of whatever you are reading.

 

[bucfanmike]

they have their uses, but they are not going for places like a kettle as the steam keeps the laser from working. They also just do surface temp, so not good for mashing. I do have a cheap one that I use for certain things. Mostly for boiling my yeast starters in a flask. It lets me know when its cooled enough to add the yeast. As im building my stand, itll be nice to see how much heat im getting near my gas valves and wiring.

 

[Wynne-R]

I have this one, which is on sale now. http://www.thermoworks.com/products/ir/ir_mini.html

I use it for reading temps on glass carboys. There is a fair amount of guesswork, as the outside temperature will only match the inside temperature outside of the main fermentation.

I have a new batch of wort in a five gallon carboy sitting in three gallons of water. The air temp is 70F. The water is 57F. The IR reads 62-68F (middle-top) for the part of the carboy sticking out of the water. The wort temperature is 59F as read by a thermowell.

This a worst case scenario, once the fermentation gets going, it will stir things up and even it all out. Then it’ll read a little high, as any stick on thermometer will. I'm cooling from the bottom, the glass above the water will be a little warmer than the beer.

It’s great for cooking with cast iron, terrible with stainless steel. As previously mentioned, it won’t read liquids with steam coming off.

 

[stpug]

I use one mainly for monitoring fermenting temperature on my carboy (shoot the side of the carboy). Mine has a ±4 °F accuracy which is good enough for me at this time considering it's non-invasive and I'm generally just monitoring temps. I have found that it works reasonably well for a surface temperature. Most times I would guess that it's within 2°F of what it's reading, especially when the device is used in a room-like temperature setting. I usually take temperatures of surfaces around the carboy prior to getting the carboy temperature which I feel helps me decide on the accuracy of the carboy. I have good confidence in it's readings most times.

Where I HAVE seen poor readings are:
1) Battery getting low and readings start bouncing around a bit.
2) If I take it in a cold environment (<~50°F) for several minutes it will begin to read lower than actual by many degrees.
3) It cannot read surface temperature on stainless surfaces - totally inconsistent/incorrect readings.

It can be used in a liquid scenario decently well if you swirl up the liquid to get the center liquid to the surface and you keep your laser on the up-swirling liquid area. I use it in candy making a lot and it works really well. I recently tested my instant read digital thermometer, coarse meat thermometer, analog mercury thermometer, and infrared thermometer against each other in a cup of hot water. The results were that the instant-read and infrared were within a degree of each other, the meat thermometer was in about the same range, but the mercury was about 10°F low. My conclusion was that the mercury thermometer was not accurate.

 

[thyirishmen]

I have a standard style. But are there any good digital styles out there that are actually accurate? Tired of al these crap inaccurate readings.

 

[Spartan1979]

Mostly for boiling my yeast starters in a flask. It lets me know when its cooled enough to add the yeast.

That's what I was thinking one would be good for.