Smartref Adventure Begins

[Clint Yeastwood]

My Smartref rolled in. I decided to fire it up just to see how it worked. I did not use distilled water to calibrate it because none is on hand right now, but I figured bottled purified water would do just to get the hang of the machine. Purified and tap water gave me 1.000, so I figured it was working well enough.

I have a beer that measured 1.013 with a hydrometer. The Smartref insisted it was 1.026. Then it decided it was 1.024. The hydrometer is pretty accurate with water, and my beer doesn't taste like pancake syrup, so I'm pretty sure 1.013 is about right.

The Smartref has a default wort correction of 1.03. To make the Smartref match the hydrometer, I had to go up around 1.8, no zero. Seems a wee bit excessive. Just a tiny bit.

They tell you to get your own factor my dividing your Smartref Brix by your hydrometer Brix.

I did all the stuff the manual said to do. Degassing. Lights turned down. Clear beer. Temperature close to that of the machine. No idea what's happening.

The up side is that Anton Paar will respond to my inquiry by Friday. Only 24-48 hours!

The documentation is not exactly voluminous. Here is the entire troubleshooting section: "If errors occur during the measurement process the app will provide respective information."

"Respective"?? I didn't get any information from the app. I guess when they say "errors," they are referring to error messages, not inaccuracies.

I have a 30-day guarantee. Whoo hoo.

As for using it, turning aside from the issue of whether it works, it's extremely simple. Dump fluid on sensor. Wait. Takes a couple of seconds to give a reading. Cleaning is basically holding it under a tap and wiping the water off with something soft.

I hope they can tell me what's going on. This machine would be great on brew days if I could make it function.

 

[DBhomebrew]

It's still a refractometer, yes? You'll still need to treat it as such. For post-fermentation measurements you'll need the OG and current gravity in Brix so you can run it through a refractometer calculator.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Thanks for the tip. I guess I'm treating an instrument that's ready for wort as though it were ready for beer.

I was thinking about the hot side when I got this thing, but here I am, trying to measure the fermented product.

There are a bunch of settings and tools in the app. They are not explained very well. Actually, they are not explained, period, unless there is literature for the app out there somewhere. I had the impression they would help me get the gravity of finished beer, but without some kind of manual, I don't know what's going on. I wonder if this is because Anton Paar is used to selling to professionals.

One app calculator asks for the Brix WRI. I had to look that up.

I don't know much about chemistry. I took a couple of semesters, which means I know what a covalent bond is, but not much more. From other studies, I know about indices of refraction, Snell's law, Brewster's angle, and total internal reflection, but I have no idea what goes on with liquids that are part ethanol and part...whatever is left in beer after fermentation. And I never encountered Brix in school.

You would think there would be a page out there that explains the science, but I can't find it. Lots of homebrewer-oriented stuff, but it's all conclusory. Lacking in explanation.

I guess I don't need to understand it.

It looks like good hydrometer readings would be helpful to getting the most out of this device.

I don't know if the answer to good hydrometer accuracy is buying a better hydrometer or taking measurements of known solutions to calibrate the one I have.

 

[DBhomebrew]

I think you have all the tools you need in the $20-30 you have invested in a basic hydrometer and refractometer. I'd return the the electronics and buy more ingredients with the cash. But, that's just me and the source of my previous comment of 'oy'.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

This thing should give me 5% of the mess, better accuracy, much better speed, and the only technique I'll have to be concerned with is getting good samples. It is definitely worth it to me to give it a try for a month.

I don't mind spending a little for things that make the experience significantly better. All told, I spent around a grand on the Braumeister, and once I finally got the annoying bug flashed out of it, it turned out to be a real pleasure to use compared to fiddling with a burner, a kettle, and a converted cooler with a false bottom. I think the $400 wifi module is stupid, though. You have to join a sort of cloud cult in order to get any use out of it. Speidel really blew it.

I may also get a better hydrometer with a narrower range. My 2002 hydrometer goes all the way to 1.170, and I am not aware of any use for the last 60 points. I don't see myself making any 1.170-OG beers. Far as I know, the maximum is nowhere near that.

I don't know how accurate it is at various levels of density. Do cheap hydrometers have wall thickness variations that cause meaningful errors? I don't know, but there may be a reason why there are $3 hydrometers and $30 hydrometers.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Doing a wheat beer today. The boil just started. Using the factory 1.03 wort correction factor and a wort that is still pretty clear, I get 1.051, which should be about right.

It's extremely easy to use. I didn't spill a drop anywhere.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Refractometer: 13.3, which is 1.054, pretty much.

Hydrometer: 1.054.

 

[DBhomebrew]

Are you going to give the ol' $20 jobber a try?

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

The refractometer I mentioned is the China special.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Okay. I got 1.055 (Chinese) and 1.054 (Austrian), with a correction factor of 1.03. The Chinese refractometer is either holding its own or just as wrong as the Smartref. But the spread was higher earlier.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Now getting 1.054 Austrian and 1.058 Chinese. The Smartref seems easier to deal with.

 

[Peteinno]

I finally got to use my new Smartref on a batch this past week. Works really well on pre and post boil readings. The final gravity is what confused me. It was reading 1.031 when the hydrometer reading was 1.012. I finally figured it out, no thanks to the crappy instructions. You have to save your post boil (OG) reading by adding it to a batch (a name for your beer). You then have to save your final gravity reading to the batch. Then you go into the batch and that is where the final gravity calculation will appear as well as abv. The calculated correction brought it down to 1.016. Now I'm questioning my hydrometer...

 

[matt_m]

I didn’t know why anyone would want a SmartRef when the EasyDens can be used both pre and post fermentation. then stumbled upon the fact that using both simultaneously one can measure the ABV of a beer.

I now know my barrel aged chocolate cherry stout which both fermented some sugars from the cherries and picked up something in the barrel ended up around 10.4%.