making a measuring stick

i want to make marks on my brewing spoon to see how much wort/water i have in my pots.. what is the best way to mark on it? my first thought was sharpie but i am worried about flavors/contamination getting into my brew

thoughts/suggestions?

You could make notches with corresponding numbers scratched above! Like Roman numerals to indicate gallons/liters!
I installed a sight glass to my kettle, check out bargainfittings.com!

Just my humble opinion

I use one of those large wooden paint stir sticks with lines I drew on with a Sharpie. I added one gallon, measured, and marked a line. Added another gallon, measured, marked a line, etc. There will be no flavors given off by the Sharpie. One one side I have lines for my 7.5 gallon brew pot and on the flip side I have lines for my 15.5 gallon keggle. It dries really fast so it is perfect for clearly seeing the wet level and accurately telling how much liquid is in the pot/keggle.

I used a yardstick and a sharpie. Instead of actually adding water to my kettle to make the marks, which is fraught with potential issues, I just calculated how many inches per gallon on the yardstick using the dimensions of my pot, then I marked the gallons on the backside of the yardstick based on those measurements.

I suppose there is some potential that I'm introducing toxins into my brew, but the marks have been there for a year or two now and don't seem to be fading, so I kinda doubt there's a problem.

thanks for the ideas guys!

I took a wood dowel and made crude scratches in it with a saw. Doesn't have to be pretty, just functional.

I guess I should have added that I only need to use the wooden stick up until the time of flame out so the boiling wort basically sanitizes it. When I chill and transfer to the fermenter I never put it back into the beer since there are gallon marks on my fermentation buckets and carboys and you don't want to risk contamination at that point...

well my big spoon is plastic so i think im going to make small notches in it... then when measuring how much cool wort i have should i just use a new sanitized stick?

I use some 3\4" PVC pipe with sharpy lines drawn on it. It's welfare, but it works. Oh yeah, I had to mark which end was the top because I found out the hard way that it does matter which end is up.

I use a dowel rod with marks made with a sharpie.

There was another thread on this. Why have anything touch your beer you are not sure of? Just mark the stick in reverse so that it never touches the beer.

So basically the "highest" mark on your stick would be the lowest measurement in your kettle.

~Diz

dave46382 said:

i use a dowel rod with marks made with a sharpie.

Click to expand...

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx2

DizzyPants said:

There was another thread on this. Why have anything touch your beer you are not sure of? Just mark the stick in reverse so that it never touches the beer.

So basically the "highest" mark on your stick would be the lowest measurement in your kettle.

~Diz

Click to expand...

i like this idea

I just use our big plastic spoon also. Just use a sharpie, its fine. You will have to redraw the lines though almost after each batch (especially the lower ones).

The guys on the Brewing Network had a good idea on one of their programs..

- Take a length of copper pipe.
- Solder a cap on each end.
- Use the pipe cutter to put a nice ring around the pipe at whatever increments you want.
- There you go, a copper measuring stick.

If you're worried, just use two rods. One rod is marked and the other isn't. Place the one that's NOT marked in the wort and pull it out to compare against the marks.

I'm not too worried about these sorts of things but I would rather some sharpie gets into the wort than scratching into plastic (which, from what I've read on here) likes to harbor nasties and I might use the spoon after the wort has cooled to swirl a vortex.

DizzyPants said:

There was another thread on this. Why have anything touch your beer you are not sure of? Just mark the stick in reverse so that it never touches the beer.

So basically the "highest" mark on your stick would be the lowest measurement in your kettle.

~Diz

Click to expand...

+1. To do that, you need to fill your kettle with a gallon (and/or half gallon) of water/wort, and then mark your measuring stick with the top edge of your kettle. By doing this, the stick rarely ever touches the wort.