water volume rounding up or down

[juskojj]

if beersmith gives a volume of .39 quarts round up to .5 quarts or down to .25 quarts? does it matter? what about for small batches like a gallon or 2 to 3 gallons?

i have 2 different pitchers 1 with .25 quart increments and another with .5 quart increments so i could do either

 

[Murphys_Law]

I'd go a little below .5 and have a beer.

 

[jonny24]

Eyeball it. All my water volumes are done by the 1/4 gal marking on a bucket.

Although with small batches it would have more of an effect... I think eyeballing between quart markers should be close enough.

 

[tzaccario]

I always thought it was better to have a little less, and add water if needed vs having to much and having to boil down some.

 

[TheMadKing]

I'd agree that rounding down is better. That way you can just add water at the end of your boil, rather than having to boil longer and messing up your calculated hop utilization.

 

[McKnuckle]

Well, you needn't be restricted to quarts. Convert to liters, then weigh it out using a gram scale. With water, Kg = L, so it's super convenient.

Liters = Gallons x 3.78541.

0.39 qt = 0.369 L, or 0.369 Kg.

Might sound obsessive, but it depends how much you care about accuracy - and it does matter more for small batches, no doubt.

Hint:
Use Google. Go to google.com, type in .39 qt = L, then hit enter. See what happens. You can do this for most common units, and it makes things really convenient.

 

[bucketnative]

Just interpolate it to roughly 0.39... You know that 0.39 lies slightly beyond the mid-point (0.375) between 0.25 and 0.50. That will be closer than going to either of the markings.