Show Us Your Short-Cuts

[heywolfie1015]

For cooling wort to take accurate hydrometer readings:

Pour the hot wort sample into a pie tin or one of those cheap, disposable roasting tins. Put a bunch of ice cubes in the sink and set the tin on top of them. Move the wort back and forth in the tin. Should cool your wort down in under a minute.

Before learning this trick, I would be halfway through the boil before my wort was cool enough to tell me what the pre-boil OG was.

 

[weirdboy]

For cooling wort to take accurate hydrometer readings:

Pour the hot wort sample into a pie tin or one of those cheap, disposable roasting tins. Put a bunch of ice cubes in the sink and set the tin on top of them. Move the wort back and forth in the tin. Should cool your wort down in under a minute.

Before learning this trick, I would be halfway through the boil before my wort was cool enough to tell me what the pre-boil OG was.

I just use a refractometer...takes a few seconds. For pre-boil readings I will often take a hyrdometer sample at the same time, and stick it in the fridge, and then by the time the boil is wrapping up, the sample is cooled down to the right range. I basically just use it to validate my refractometer readings, though.