I hate my cheap refractometer

[WI_Wino]

Particulates can blur the line. Additionally he says he stirs well to minimize stratification. OP states all are off by 0.5-0.7 consistently. That's because he did not us wort correction factor to get true SG. Based on SG, his wort correction factor is most likely 0.95-0.96.

I see what you are saying. Im going to back track a bit and say figuring out the wort correction factor is a good first step.

 

[Horseshoot]

Maybe I have just been lucky, but when I have measured brix, with my refractometer, it always agrees with what I have seen when measuring specific gravity, with a hydrometer. And when I get a blurry line, I simply adjust the eye piece to my eye, and it sharpens up. Maybe I am missing something?

Mike

 

[fun4stuff]

Maybe I have just been lucky, but when I have measured brix, with my refractometer, it always agrees with what I have seen when measuring specific gravity, with a hydrometer. And when I get a blurry line, I simply adjust the eye piece to my eye, and it sharpens up. Maybe I am missing something?

Mike

You wort correction factor must be 1. Other people have reported having 1 as theirs as well.

https://m.reddit.com/r/Homebrewing/comments/42x7ea/refractometer_users_whats_your_wort_correction/

 

[Yesfan]

I always thought the WCF is nothing more than taking a Brix reading and times it by 4 (Mine doesn't have a SG scale). I do use Brewzor and have entered the Brix amount to double check it and it's usually at most just one point off (ex: 15Brix is 1.059 instead of 1.060). I'm not going to lose sleep over one gravity point.



My refracto has ATC, so I just take a spoon of wort, drizzle it on the refractometer, then take a reading. I don't even use the dropper that came with it. The line is blurry at first, but once it clears up, I then mark what the gravity is (Brix times 4). After each reading, I rinse it with water then dry it. I also make sure it's calibrated before each brew session. I rinse and dry after each reading and not before as I'm afraid any residual rinse water I didn't get dried off will skew the reading.

 

[ittybittykittycommittee]

Mine is terrible. Despite repeatedly calibrating it is always off by at least 0.1 from my hydrometers. It was definitely a waste of money.

 

[philipCT]

Yeah your weak point is you don't know your wort correction factor.

Okay, got it. That is definitely something I've learned from this thread (how could I have not known that before???) so I will bone up on that process and get that taken care of.

Thank you!

 

[Sudz]

I so wanted the refractometer to work. I do have a decent one and it does present a stable display however, repeatability is poor. I simply cannot trust the readings from one brew or sample to another.

It works well with sugar water dilutions but not with wert. Even my lighter brews are questionable. After a considerable effort of trying to find a suitable method of obtaining viable results, I threw in the towel.

Talking with local brew club members, it was common knowledge that these do not provide the level of accuracy required for brewing. Virtually no one used them for brewing however, a number of guys did say they worked reasonably well for making wine.

 

[UndeadFred]

I must be lucky, mine is good enough for government work compared to the hydrometer, and I check it often. It's very nice for taking spot relative measurements. One comment.. you can use RO or even tap water to clean between reading, but use DISTILLED to calibrate it. Try calibrating the unit with distilled and then put a drop of even very low (<10) TDS RO water on it. It'll read 1-2 Brix...

 

[ajdelange]

It works well with sugar water dilutions but not with wert.

Thats because it is designed for use with sucrose - not wort.

Talking with local brew club members, it was common knowledge that these do not provide the level of accuracy required for brewing.

It is well known by some but judging from the number of people who try to use them in brewing I wouldn't say the knowledge is common.

Virtually no one used them for brewing however, a number of guys did say they worked reasonably well for making wine.

That's because must is mostly sucrose and invert sugar which has RI that tracks concentration much better than extract in wort does.

 

[fun4stuff]

I so wanted the refractometer to work. I do have a decent one and it does present a stable display however, repeatability is poor. I simply cannot trust the readings from one brew or sample to another.

It works well with sugar water dilutions but not with wert. Even my lighter brews are questionable. After a considerable effort of trying to find a suitable method of obtaining viable results, I threw in the towel.

Talking with local brew club members, it was common knowledge that these do not provide the level of accuracy required for brewing. Virtually no one used them for brewing however, a number of guys did say they worked reasonably well for making wine.

That's because most people do not know how to use them with beer. You need to figure out the wort correction factor specific to your refractometer.

http://seanterrill.com/2012/01/06/refractometer-calculator/

http://braukaiser.com/blog/blog/2012/03/23/dont-trust-your-refractometer-blindly/

http://www.brewersfriend.com/how-to-determine-your-refractometers-wort-correction-factor/

 

[ajdelange]

A refractometer is a refractometer. It measured refractive index. You can put any scale you like on it and it is useful if that scale relates in a consistent way with the concentration of the substance to be measured. The Bx scale on the refractometers so many brewers try to use is tied to sucrose. Wort contains some but not very much of that. The other sugars found in wort behave with respect to density very much like sucrose upon which the Plato scale is founded. Regretably you cannot come up with such a scale for refractometer. What is particularly frustrating is that they get reasonably close much of the time but then along comes a wort that is off by a Bx or 2. A 'wort correction factor' of other than 1 is indicative that your refractometer has bias error. Or it could mean that you brew one type of beer much more than others. Knowing the wort correction factor will not help with the fact that a plot of Bx reading vs hydrometer reading is a scatter plot rather than a set of points tightly clustered along a line. This very phenomenon has been referred to in some of the posts in this thread. The wort correction factor may reduce the rms error by finding the best fit to your data but will not prevent you from getting wild readings from time to time. If only we could tell when those times were going to be.

 

[jwalkermed]

Okay, so no one out there is using digital refractometers? I've seen some pretty positive reviews of the Milwaukee device.

Yup have one. Love it. Get one if it's in your budget.

 

[ajdelange]

Yes, I have a couple of them and they are fine for what they are intended for, And if you are OK being within half a Bx most of the time on wort knowing that you will be off by a Bx or 2 sometimes they are fine for wort too. That's just not accurate enough for me.