1 litre samples

[Brewlaw]

I have been taking samples to test SG every day since the past 5 days, and I have used about 1 litre of beer out of 23. Is this too much, or is this expected?

 

[JimRausch]

I guess the question has to be asked- why so many SGs?
If you are checking if she's done fermenting, skip a couple days between samples.

 

[reverendj1]

You should only be checking the gravity twice, maybe three times total. Once when you think it is complete for a base and one 2 days after to make sure fermentation is complete. Checking it every day may give you some nice data about how it is fermenting, but all you are doing is wasting beer and increasing the chance of infection/oxidizing. Learn patience. RDWHAHB

 

[Brewlaw]

Well I checked again and it was only about 0.5 litres. So its better than I thought. Also, I just added beer finings, so I had to disinfect the stirring spoon, and stir the beer in the vessel. Hope the beer finings wont screw up my beer.

 

[frazier]

Hold on a sec, there's a high horse around here somewhere for me to get up on ... Aha there he is!

Too much testing! Conventional wisdom is that you need to test in order to bottle. IMO, this bit of received wisdom has led to unnecessary beer losses, which makes baby Dionysis cry.

Is it a big beer? Are you trying to get it into secondary at the earliest possible moment? Are you trying to bottle at the earliest possible moment? Are you unable to see the 3 or 4 other signs that fermentation is done (this is my big objection to buckets)? Then go ahead and test. But get a refractometer, it wastes less beer.

Cheers!

 

[Bigscience]

Two things, time for a refractometer for one. You only need less than a mL of sample.
#2 I test twice a day and it let's me know how the fermentation is progressing and when I can ramp up the temp to drive it to completion. I've also saved a few batches by seeing that's started to stall out. I could then rouse/repitch.

 

[Brewlaw]

How much would a refractometer cost? I just checked and its in the range of £100! Thats way too costly for me. What do you mean by rouse/repitch Bigscience?

 

[Denny's Evil Concoctions]

You can get a refractometer of ebay for under $40.

Using them for anything other than initial OG can be an art, as the science behind using them during fermentation is tricky.

 

[Bigscience]

I got an analog refractometer of eBay for around 30 and it worked fine. My eyes aren't what they used to be so I upgraded to a digital one and love it. Completely unnecessary but still cool.

For a bunch of batches I tested samples with both hydrometer and refractometer and found they were right on so I don't even use the hydrometer any more for in process testing. (I calibrated and temp correct my hydrometer by the way)

I use the formulas from the more beer spreadsheet and find them to be acceptable. I know there is talk about there being better models though too. Look at it this way, if you use it to monitor fermentation and the numbers keep changing, it doesn't mater if your formula is off by a few points. Let it keep going.

 

[Denny's Evil Concoctions]

beersmith also has a built in refractometer calculator. It's not bad for feremnting beers but requires calibrating the OG's beforehand.

 

[reverendj1]

This looks just like the one I have. It's about £18 with shipping from Hong Kong. You can get this one shipped from the UK for £25, which may make returns easier, etc. Just be careful, even though they do show both Brix and SG, I have heard that on higher gravity beers (1.060+ or something) the conversion chart on them skews, making the SG measurement wrong, so I always just use the Brix side and convert to SG with a calculator. *Note* The SG measurements are skewed on some of the cheap Chinese refracs, not necessarily all of them.