Good Deal on Ph Meter? $11 shipped!

[PGEduardo]

Your liberal use of absolutes is a bit dubious to me. I'm not saying that this pH meter will absolutely do the trick, but it might and I'll go ahead and post up the results to provide some quantitative information instead of vague absolutes.

I don't yet know how slight changes in pH affect the final product, but I'm well on my way to finding out (going from no pH consideration to controlling within 0.1).

This forum spans the spectrum of homebrewers, from extract kits in HD buckets to pro-level closed system multi-vessel all grain + distilled water/mineral additions. At the end of the day, we've seen numerous ABSOLUTE TRUTH's dismissed by simple experimentation. I'm not above this facet of human nature - when I put a ton of effort into what I perceive as an improvement, my taste buds WANT to believe it's true.

I'm still using tap water + campden tablets. My goal with this cheap meter is to control pH to within 0.1 accuracy. Using control buffer solutions will let me know if I'm able to do that or not, and how reliably I'm able to do that. Right now my beer is pretty darn good, but I know there's still a lot left on the table. I want to see if there is a jump in quality from no conscious pH control, to 0.1 pH control.

The next meter I buy will be a ~$100 unit just because I tend to like things with "gold plating". I'm an engineer and I love spending money on top tier stuff, I just don't have time to research/construct my end-goal RO system yet so I bought this toy to play around with. I hope that my first batches with "loose" and "tight" pH control will educate me as to the perceptible differences. I don't want to preach gold plating at every novice brewer without having that mid-level experience, personally.

We'll see...

 

[ajdelange]

I wouldn't trust the pH meters you use in the lower level chem labs, so why do you even bother? Besides, I hear each of you saying these meters are junk but no one of you have tested them against the "lab" meters. How can you be so sure of yourselves?

How can you be so sure I haven't tested them against lab meters?

I suspect you are just blowing smoke since you have spent so much money on a "better" quality meter.

I wouldn't do that to my fellow brewers. The goal here is to set the record straight.

Now that you have had a little time to consider how it is you can be so sure that I haven't tested against lab meters I'll point out that it isn't necessary. A recently calibrated meter, cheapo or costing $1000 will read 7.00 in 7.00 buffer at the appropriate temperature (and assuming the cheapo has an 0.01 resolution display). The problem with the cheap meters is that they don't stay there if you leave them in the calibrating buffer. They wander all over the place. Thus to evaluate an $11 meter all I need is the meter, a thermometer (if the meter doesn't have one built in) and a buffer. I then run the stability test described in https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=302256 and derive the accuracy number from its data. That post has sample data from a good $125 meter and other posts in the thread have data from other good meters.

So every time I check a cheapie (and I have done this for friends) I do the stability check and the results are dismal but I don't have to break out a $1000 meter to compare it against. The stability test tells me all I need to know. Reliability (how long you have it in service before it bricks itself) is another matter. Who knows about this meter. It may be the holy grail of cheap pH meters. If OP chooses to do the stability test he'll know soon enough. Of course if I were selling these things and they performed as well as the Hach or Milwaukee meters at $100 I'd raise the price on them.

 

[passedpawn]

WTH happened here? Holy cow.

To the OP, $11 is cheap, give it a whirl, do a stability test over time and temp. Let us know how it went. It's a cheap experiment. If it doesn't work out for you, check out the one I linked above. It's got 3-point calibration, automatically recognizes the cal standards, ATC, easy to clean / made for food, replaceable electrode head.