Cheap thermometers. Is thermapen the only option? Hydrometer question too!

I'm planning on ordering a thermometer and Hydrometer to start homebrewing but on all the online sights there is not one of them that gets above a 3 star rating.. Besides the liquid chrystal thermom. you stick on the sides of carboys..
I don't want to buy a product that all the reviews say will just break in a month.

I searched this sight and found lots of posts about thermapen.
Thermapens are 90$ is that my best option for thermometers?
I don't really want to spend that much. Is there a durable good thermometer for 25$ out there?

Also is there a good Hydrometer out there as well that is around the 25$ range.

Thanks for any advice you can give me.. I don't want to break the bank but i know temp. is a important part of homebrewing so the Thermapen may be the ONLY and best option.

Hydrometers are usually $6 or $7 bucks at your homebrew shop. This is critical.

If you're doing extract brews to start, you don't need a crazy accurate thermometer, anything +/- 5 degrees will be fine. Really you only need it to know when your wort is cool enough to pitch the yeast. Again, a $6 floating thermometer at your homebrew shop works great for that.

When moving to all grain, accuracy is far more important for hitting your mash temps. But again, if you're somewhere in the low 150's you can still make good beer, so you don't need a thermapen - many folks use the $25 ones with great success. I'd say skip it for now and learn your process. When you've got your process and want to start honing consistency, then you can think about a thermapen if you want.

I'd spend my money first on controlling fermentation temp, even something simple like a swamp cooler.

EDIT: As Burgs said, if you cook meat, a thermapen rocks. Most meat thermometers are hot garbage. My thermapen never leaves my side when cooking meat.

I grabbed a waterproof thermo from Fry's that is pretty rugged and accurate... That being said, I also bought a Thermapen... Guess which one I use the most? I got mine when Thermo-Works had an open box sale...

As far as hydrometers, they should be pretty cheap (under $10) from most LHBS and online vendors...

It's definitely not the only option out there, but the Thermapen is worth the price in my opinion. If you want to just buy one thermometer and be done with it, it's a good investment. I've gotten a lot of use out of mine as a meat thermometer & have used it for soap-making as well.

I would highly suggest this one. I use it as well as a number of other homebrewers. It's waterproof, inexpensive, and very fast reading. While not as fast as the Thermapen, it's pretty darn close (ie. +2 seconds or so)

Amazon.com: CDN DTQ450X ProAccurate Quick-Read Thermometer: Kitchen & Dining

I get good use out of this:

Homebrew Finds: Infrared Thermometer - $14.43!

Also, most any homebrew or kitchen shop will sell some kind of (cheap) spring-dial thermometer that you can hang off the side of your pot.

I went through 2 cheap thermometers and finally sprung for a Thermopen. The instant read feature is really nice, and the accuracy is very important when mashing.

I have been a big proponent of the Thermapen since I got one a few years ago. I probably spent $100+ on other thermometers that ended up being inaccurate and/or breaking before I decided enough was enough. I am sure there are probably good alternatives out there, but I didn't find one before I gave up on it. I also bought one on sale when they were cleaning out old inventory or something.

To me it was not just the cost of the thermos I had already bought, but also the opportunity cost of spending 6+ hours making substandard beer and not knowing whether it was because my mash temps were all over the place, or some other reason.

I know there are plenty of good brewers here on HBT that have never used one, though, so it's certainly not a necessity. I am sure glad to own mine, though. Apart from just brewing stuff, I use mine oustide on the smoker and in the kitchen. When I make bread and when I make candy, etc.


That said, if you are not an all-grain or partial mash brewer, and just want something to monitor fermentation temperatures, I wouldn't get one.

Thermapens are awesome.

It appears that Thermapen is having another open box sale...

If you can't bring yourself to pay over $50 for a thermometer, the CDN DTQ450 is my favorite for under $20 and I'm not just saying that because I sell them (it's the other way around).

Folks might be interested to know that CDN has a unit to directly compete with the thermapen coming out in about 2 months once it passes NSF. The three differences I see so far is that it's waterproof, recalibratable, and about $25-30 cheaper. I'm really looking forward to it.

When you wrote hydrometer, I have a feeling you meant refractometer. Maybe not. For $25, you'll need to buy it directly from Hong Kong. In the U.S., they go for more like $40.

Bobby_M said:

If you can't bring yourself to pay over $50 for a thermometer, the CDN DTQ450 is my favorite for under $20 and I'm not just saying that because I sell them (it's the other way around).

Folks might be interested to know that CDN has a unit to directly compete with the thermapen coming out in about 2 months once it passes NSF. The three differences I see so far is that it's waterproof, recalibratable, and about $25-30 cheaper. I'm really looking forward to it.

When you wrote hydrometer, I have a feeling you meant refractometer. Maybe not. For $25, you'll need to buy it directly from Hong Kong. In the U.S., they go for more like $40.

Click to expand...

Thats really exciting. There is a video on youtube of a guy using a cdn dtq450 and a thermapen at the same time in boiling water and the thermapen looked like it might have actually been a hair slower. Although they read .4 degrees different. I've been wondering if there was a direct competitor for the thermapen!