hydrometer [heart]break and other queries

[lametown]

Hi all,

I just recently purchased a 6.5 gallon glass carboy to augment my plastic fermenting buckets and to enable me to do two brews at once.

So today I brewed an Imperial Nut Brown and I discovered some annoying things about using the carboy. First off, using a funnel and screen to pour the chilled wort into the carboy was incredibly tedious, and I had to clean the funnel filter at least 6 times. I'm thinking of pouring next time over a wire mesh screen before the liquid reaches the funnel, therefore filtering out more turb with the larger mesh screen. Any other solutions to this problem?
Second, taking a hydrometer reading while using the carboy is incredibly difficult. I have never trusted using the small "sample" container to take hydrometer readings. Almost every time when I use them I will get a reading way too low or too high compared to just plopping the hydrometer into my wort (sanitizing it first of course).
So today, having no way to easily retrieve the hydrometer from inside the carboy, I used the sample container method. I got a reading of 1.110, obviously ridiculously high. The target OG of my Nut Brown was 1.071-1.078. So I thought, "obviously this stupid sampler reading method is flawed; maybe I could just plop my hydrometer into the carboy and leave it, since I won't need another reading until both my brews are ready for bottling..." So I decided to drop it in. Carefully lowering it as far as my fingers could reach, for fear of it shattering against the glass bottom of the carboy, I gently dropped the hydrometer in. Crack. My heart sunk, and I feared I'd broken the hydrometer. It floated up, showing a reading of a paltry 1.040...something was wrong. Then it keeled over on its side, and through the side of the carboy I could clearly see that the bottom had shattered. Nothing like mercury in your beer, so I had to pour out the whole batch and painstakingly cleanse the carboy of mercury and tiny ball bearings using my new bottle washer (very useful).
How the hell are you supposed to take a good hydrometer reading using a glass carboy? I haven't been able to figure out how I could retrieve the hydrometer from the carboy because of the narrow opening at the carboy's top. I also don't trust the sample containers to take hydrometer reading one bit. They're 100% wrong in my experience. Can someone help me out with a new strategy? I want to start over my Imperial Nut Brown soon this week, but I have no idea how I'm going to take a good OG reading without wasting a lot of beer filling up a separate container...

Any help or just general tips using a glass carboy would be much appreciated.

Cheers

 

[day_trippr]

First, if you can't simply leave most of the trub in the boil kettle via whirlpooling, letting it rest until a cone forms in the middle, then drawing the wort off from the side of the kettle, I wouldn't worry about it getting into a primary fermenter. It's not going to hurt your brew.

Second, I don't understand why your hydro samples are so far off the mark. 40 points is huge! It's hard to imagine how you're drawing the sample that would have it so far off.

Fwiw, I typically fill my OG sample flask from the carboy shortly after it's been filled with new wort and after giving it a good swirl to mix up the contents, then let the hydro sample rest with a Dixie cup over the top until I get around to checking it. After that I rarely if ever take another sample, until I either rack it to secondary or directly to a keg, and I'll drink that sample just to see how things have gone, so there really isn't any waste of beer involved...

Cheers!

 

[lametown]

Can you explain what you mean by whirlpooling? I assume you mean stirring it in a circle, essentially?

As for my readings, I had been using a rather large hydrometer, probably 10 inches in length, so maybe it requires a larger sample? Who knows...either way I have to buy a new one now, so I'll choose more wisely this go around.

Another experience I have that seems to be very rare among my fellow home brewers is that I've required a blowoff spout the last 2 two times I've brewed (only on my fourth batch now excluding the hydrometer-spoiled one). By about 24 hours after pitching the yeast, beer will be making its way into my airlock on top of my plastic bucket, so I quickly shove a plastic tube (I think 3/8") into the airlock hole and submerge the other end of the tube into a growler filled halfway with heavily-sanitized water. My tube becomes partially filled with foam and turb-like material for a few days before the bubbling slows down. It's worked well on the two batches before!

 

[dfess1]

What kind of brewing are you doing? Extract, with a concentrated boil, and then adding water to get to final volume? If so, add your wort, and water, and mix it well. Then, using a thief, pull off enough to take a gravity reading. All you need is a little test tube that is slight larger in diameter than your hydrometer. The amount of beer pulled off is negligible.

I don't think i'd worry about the trub getting into your fermentor for now. Just let it sit for 3 weeks, and then rack off the top of it. Shouldn't be much of a difference between when using a screen or not using a screen.