Thermapen sucks

Williams 728
Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
bob1852

bob1852

PKU
HBT Supporter
Joined
Jun 2, 2008
Messages
64,951
Reaction score
16,516
Sure, I guess it's okay and relatively instant read. If you can actually get the dumb overpriced thing to turn on and stay on.

My CDN DTQ450X is as accurate, just about as quick (more so, since it actually turns on), and a helluva a lot cheaper. Think I bought it from Bobby_M for about ~$14.

/rant
 
Mine works great.

$79 well spent

It stays on for 10 mins as per the settings. You can disable the auto off feature if you prefer.

Breathe...:D
 
I love my thermapen. It was a gift so price notwithstanding it's never malfunctioned....ever.
 
Thermapen is one of the best purchases I've made. Love it. I use it every day for cooking, smoking, beer making. Call Customer service and let them know your problem.
 
Wow. Is this like what the rant-flame-religious-wars of old were like when we'd fight to the death over our favorite programming editor or language in the 80's?

I had a CDN and loved it. It got damp and immediately failed. I was surprised but only out $20 buh. I got the longer probe CDN (size matters when you don't want to burn your delicate fingers in the mash) for about $21.

Brew on.

Oh, and WordStar still rules! So there.
 
I bought my Screamin' Yellow Splash-Proof Thermapen when they first came out, primarily for kitchen and barbecue use where it truly excels like no other. It has always worked perfectly.

I actually only use it for brewing to calibrate my multitude of digital sensors and kettle thermometers and to check the temperature of yeast pitches. Otherwise I don't find it all that useful due to its short reach - and I use an RT610B-24 to check mash temps instead...

Cheers! (btw, the yellow Thermapens are the fastest ;))
 
AZ_IPA said:
Sure, I guess it's okay and relatively instant read. If you can actually get the dumb overpriced thing to turn on and stay on.

My CDN DTQ450X is as accurate, just about as quick (more so, since it actually turns on), and a helluva a lot cheaper. Think I bought it from Bobby_M for about ~$14.

/rant
Click to expand...

How long have you had your Thermopen? Does it need a new battery? A new purchase will be replaced at no charge. Thermopen has great customer service.
 
day_trippr said:
I use an RT610B-24 to check mash temps instead...
Click to expand...

The tech specs on those are +/- 1.8°F. I thought we needed to hold mash temps to much closer micro-Kelvin temp ranges to have any chance at making decent beer! :) I remember freaking out the time I spot checked my mash and could vary 3-4°F depending on how I'd stirred (or not stirred) it.
 
Aw, what's a couple of degrees F between enzymes and substrate? ;)

But, fwiw, I always sanity-check against the Thermapen on brew days and the two read within a degree F of each other. But that long probe is so much more useful for checking a mash...

Cheers!
 
Did you contact thermoworks? I had a bad probe and they sent out a replacement 2nd day air. Their customer service is top notch.
 
AZ_IPA said:
Sure, I guess it's okay and relatively instant read. If you can actually get the dumb overpriced thing to turn on and stay on.

My CDN DTQ450X is as accurate, just about as quick (more so, since it actually turns on), and a helluva a lot cheaper. Think I bought it from Bobby_M for about ~$14.

/rant
Click to expand...

Mine is hard to turn on, if it has shut itself off. I've had problems with it since the day I bought it. I usually resolve it by taking the batteries and and putting them back in. Sometimes that is the only thing that works. Their customer service was ok, and told me to change the batteries when I called, but it wasn't a battery issue at all (and still isn't).
 
Yooper said:
Mine is hard to turn on, if it has shut itself off. I've had problems with it since the day I bought it. I usually resolve it by taking the batteries and and putting them back in. Sometimes that is the only thing that works. Their customer service was ok, and told me to change the batteries when I called, but it wasn't a battery issue at all (and still isn't).
Click to expand...

There should be a button to turn it on. Closing and opening it again is a PITA. The switch in that mechanism has to be a weak point in the design. Even so, I love mine. The Thermopop has a button and is cheaper but a bit slower.
 
lschiavo said:
There should be a button to turn it on. Closing and opening it again is a PITA. The switch in that mechanism has to be a weak point in the design. Even so, I love mine. The Thermopop has a button and is cheaper but a bit slower.
Click to expand...

Yes, that is what my suggestion was to them a few years ago! A button. It seems to me that there is a flaw in the "open all the way" part. Sometimes it works, but almost never the first time I use it after a period of not using it. It's a pain, and a button would solve it.
 
tsever00 said:
Thermapen is one of the best purchases I've made. Love it. I use it every day for cooking, smoking, beer making. Call Customer service and let them know your problem.
Click to expand...

^This^ Plus, my wife loves it as well and also calls it a great purchase -- even after she learned the price! (And she's as Scotch as they come when it comes to spending!) :D
 
brewbama said:
I love my thermapen. It was a gift so price notwithstanding it's never malfunctioned....ever.
Click to expand...


They are great and accurate BUT the probe is too short if you have an MLT 10 gal or larger. You can't really get an accurate read on mash temps.
I use a Cooper-Atkins Cool-Rite. Very accurate, long probe. & good read out.
Also, $36!!!
 
I can't support the price tag. I'm sure it's a super high quality product but I can't do it. When I buy a new one, I'll be getting their lower price $25 one rt600c.
 
Love my thermapen.

One time I thought it was off because it wasn't the same as my lab thermometer. I checked because after years using them both my blichmann brewmometer in my kettle wasn't reading where it normally did vs. my thermapen. Anyway, turns out the other two thermometers were wrong and the thermapen was right.

It's basically the standard I use to calibrate all my other temp devices with.

I'm sure those CDNs are good units too. I know Bobby_M vouches for them and I trust in his judgement.
 
Gameface said:
Love my thermapen.

One time I thought it was off because it wasn't the same as my lab thermometer. I checked because after years using them both my blichmann brewmometer in my kettle wasn't reading where it normally did vs. my thermapen. Anyway, turns out the other two thermometers were wrong and the thermapen was right.

It's basically the standard I use to calibrate all my other temp devices with.

I'm sure those CDNs are good units too. I know Bobby_M vouches for them and I trust in his judgement.
Click to expand...

This should be a testimonial.
 
I have the same issue with my Thermapen being finicky about turning on. I also bought one of those CDN's and the one I got sucks :goat:

Maybe I should send my Thermapen in to get fixed.
 
What sucks about your CDN? Of all the units I've tested, they are badass. I too have a thermapen and it's fast and accurate just like a $90 thing should be. I leave it in my kitchen drawer for cooking and grilling. I use it to spot check a few of the CDNs with every shipment of a gross. See, even though the CDN is less than 25% of the cost of the thermapen, it's reasonably close in performance and I don't care if I lose it or break it. Incidentally I'm still using one I've had for 4 years and it survived one accidental dunk in 175F strike water and one full dunk in a bucket of starsan.
 
It stopped working the first day I used it in a CFC port. It had the shortest life of any thermometer that I have ever owned.
 
I can't say as I'm in love with my CDN, not because it doesn't work great (it really does) I just wish the probe was longer(or detachable) and was a bit quicker at hitting the temp. It doens't do anything BAD just doesn't seem great. That being said I've not exactly been kind to it since I've gotten it but for the ~$20 it cost it is a quality (near)instant read thermometer that you can calibrate. I think my next investment might be an rPi and some long SS temp probes for continual monitoring so I don't have to keep walking over to the kettle to check my temps. Might just break down and buy a Fluke instead, I do enough random electrical crap that a quality Fluke will be worth the money.
 
jsguitar said:
It stopped working the first day I used it in a CFC port. It had the shortest life of any thermometer that I have ever owned.
Click to expand...

They have a no questions asked 5 year warranty. I'm not saying it should break on you immediately but that's not really how you should judge a product. It's a piece of commodity electronics and one in a hundred will have a problem. It's more about how easy it is to get it corrected.
 
My CDN was great until I streamed it for 20m in a mash, unknowingly. Loved it till then. Replaced w the longer CDN DTW450L for about $25.
 
I've been using my $20 ThermoWerks RT600B for years. Great probe. No issues.
 
My CDN has been a beast. It has survived falling in the mash, falling in the boil, soaking in starsan, and most recently going through the wash and dry cycles in my laundry when I forgot it was in my pocket after brewing.
 
balrog said:
Wow. Is this like what the rant-flame-religious-wars of old were like when we'd fight to the death over our favorite programming editor or language in the 80's?

I had a CDN and loved it. It got damp and immediately failed. I was surprised but only out $20 buh. I got the longer probe CDN (size matters when you don't want to burn your delicate fingers in the mash) for about $21.

Brew on.

Oh, and WordStar still rules! So there.
Click to expand...


Thermopens are a bit of a cult. Their primary market is people who don't have much, if any, cognitive intuition. Let me grab my gadgets and it's off to try to win the pitmaster contest, Yay! One EMP blast later and I am completely unable to cook, Boo :-(

I have a 30cm long glass lab thermometer that is really old. It's got a hole in the top of it for a string. I drop it into my wort when cooking and hang it on the wall when fermenting.
 
podz said:
Thermopens are a bit of a cult. Their primary market is people who don't have much, if any, cognitive intuition. Let me grab my gadgets and it's off to try to win the pitmaster contest, Yay! One EMP blast later and I am completely unable to cook, Boo :-(

I have a 30cm long glass lab thermometer that is really old. It's got a hole in the top of it for a string. I drop it into my wort when cooking and hang it on the wall when fermenting.
Click to expand...

Yeah, thermapens are for people without cognitive intuition. Good observation.

I, like many, went through more than $100 worth of thermometers before I bought a thermapen. Since then, the thermapen has been by far my most reliable temperature reading device I've ever owned. Like I mentioned earlier in this thread, one time I thought my thermapen was wrong because after finding that my brewmometer and thermapen no longer agreed with each other I busted out the laboratory alcohol thermometer and it didn't agree with my thermapen, either. Well, when I attempted to calibrate my thermapen I discovered it was accurate at freezing and boiling temps. I discovered my laboratory thermometer was not.

Since then I have been happy using the thermapen as my "standard" that I use to set delta on all my other temperature reading devices (PID RTD temp probes, kettle mounted thermometers, STC-1000 temp probes, etc, etc.). It hasn't let me down.

If an EMP were to go off in my brewery I would be able to use my lab thermometer because my thermapen has allowed me to determine how far off it is from the actual temp (thanks thermapen!).

I'm not saying I DON'T lack cognitive intuition (although I don't see what that has to do with anything) but I do know that my thermapen is faster than any other thermometer I've used and at the same time is more accurate than any other thermometer I've used.

So when's the next Temple of the Thermapen cult meeting?
 
I used one in normal cooking and like it very much. The corded probe is *NOT* waterproof and I have ruined one when condensate dripped down the braid into the probe. Heating in oven several hours did not revive but replacements are inexpensive.
 

Similar threads

K
Newbie on second brew with a few dumb questions!
Replies
16
Views
1K
SoCalPlumber
SoCalPlumber
Hop
Ongoing Review: BrewHardware Premium Recirculating BIAB Package
Replies
4
Views
831
Bobby_M
Bobby_M
MBuckBrewer
Have Apples Make Cider!
Replies
1
Views
496
MaxStout
MaxStout
R
My experience with the Auber Brew Buddy 50-amp kit
Replies
0
Views
1K
RunnyDMC
R
Langerz
New Keezer - Do I have a leak?
Replies
11
Views
1K
Langerz
Langerz
InkBird 300

Latest posts

Back
Top