Tilt Hydrometer

CornyKegs 728
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I use it and have loved it so far. Still not 100% used to the calibration on it but I like it a lot.

@Derp I've tried using the brewstat site and can't figure it out. Any pointers?
 
My only advice is make sure you take a hydrometer reading with a hydrometer first, so that you can calibrate your tilt when you put it in the beer. Otherwise it may be a couple of points off.

And, if you are using it in carboys, make sure to tie some sanitized, unflavored dental floss around it and hang it out of the carboy so you can pull it out when you're finished.
 
Calibrate it at multiple points. FG never really matched against my hydrometer, but it was a great indicator of fermentation activity and when FG was reached, even if the FG measure was inaccurate. Krausen can stick to it and throw off the calibration, especially with sticky or active yeasts (ahem, trappist high gravity...). I use an old cellphone on a perpetual USB charger to log data. I did have some issues with mine after changing the battery, so I contacted them and they were really cool about replacing it when I sent mine back in.
 
mirthfuldragon said:
it was a great indicator of fermentation activity and when FG was reached.
Click to expand...

It's good to hear you say that. That was my experience. I spent quite a lot of time working on building one a few years ago and never really solved that problem. Sticky krausen was one problem which I got around by having the hydrometer 100% submerged, floating up from a tether string to the bottom of the fermentor. That worked but needs more careful buoyancy tuning. CO_2 Bubbles adhering to it were the other problem. There was a clear saw tooth track in the data as bubbles gradually grew, shed all in a single jolt, gradually accumulated again and so forth. It was quite fun though. From the size of the saw-tooth amplitude I was able to calculate the size to which bubbles grew before shedding. The FG endpoint measurement was never quite right either, like you say. I keep thinking about having another go and including an eccentric motor like a mobile phone vibrator to shake the bubbles off a few seconds before each measurement. That would have a pretty significant hit on power consumption though. Even without absolute numbers though it is nice to be able to track activity. Taking a final floating hydrometer reading at the very end is no hardship.
 
To connect your tilt to brewstat.us.
First create a device on the site and copy the url they give you into the cloud logging url in the settings in the tilt app.
Then create a recipe on the site and tie that recipe to your device
 
I've only used mine in one brew so far. I had a 1.4 degree Celsius difference and a 6 point difference in starting gravity of 1.056 and no difference in water. I calibrated temp but left gravity uncalibrated. It was great following fermentation while I was away for a few days.

One thing I picked up was it is good at tracking trends during fermentation but individual readings cycled around 4 or so points different most likely due to krausen or co2. I had my tablet in my fermentation chamber continuously logging data to Google sheet.

I ferment in a keg and I lost Bluetooth connection around 2 feet away from the keg. I assume it was due to the steel.

I transfer to serving keg with gravity points remaining so it saved me having to take hydro samples. I was using a yeast I hadn't used before and it was way quicker than I thought so I would have likely missed spunding chance if it wasn't for tilt.
 
Tombstone0 said:
To connect your tilt to brewstat.us.
First create a device on the site and copy the url they give you into the cloud logging url in the settings in the tilt app.
Then create a recipe on the site and tie that recipe to your device
Click to expand...

Perhaps you can help me out. Not to hijack the thread, but how do you turn a recipe into a BeerXML file? This is the type of file you need to upload to brewstat.us but I don't know how to create that...?
 
Awesome. I'll try these out and see what I can get to work.

Just to clarify, you need the beerXML file in order to chart the fermentation activity, correct?
 
Rob2010SS said:
Awesome. I'll try these out and see what I can get to work.

Just to clarify, you need the beerXML file in order to chart the fermentation activity, correct?
Click to expand...

If you use the app you don't need an xml file.
 
One more question on this. Do you need to have the screen of whatever device is logging data with the tilt stay on? Or will it continue logging data if the screen goes to sleep?
 
Rob2010SS said:
One more question on this. Do you need to have the screen of whatever device is logging data with the tilt stay on? Or will it continue logging data if the screen goes to sleep?
Click to expand...

I use an old iPhone and I have it programmed that it never goes to sleep so the screen stays on. It must be constantly awake and on in order for the app to upload the data.

Thus, I have the phone constantly plugged into a charger. I dim the screen brightness to the lowest setting possible.
 
It depends on your device. When I was running it on my Android device, it would log all night. But then that phone died on me and I got an old iPhone 4 off eBay. For that one, I had to permanently set the screen to stay on, otherwise when it went to sleep, it would stop logging.

As for brewstat, it has very nice graphics. But I didn't like it because I had to do the extra step of exporting the XML. And more importantly, I didn't like not having the data under my control. Brewstat is on their website. When I couldn't access it, I didn't have my data. And if I wanted to just look at a certain portion of my data, I couldn't manipulate all the graphing parameters. So I just followed the directions to export it to a Google Sheet stored with my Google account.

Also, I see no need to tie floss to it. I let mine sit in there the whole time. When I've finished transferring the beer out, I just grab the Tilt off the bottom of fermentor, or grab it as I pour it the yeast trub.
 
Thanks. Im using an old android for now. Not sure if it would log data if the screen went off so i downloaded an app to keep the screen on. We'll see how it goes.

I only used the floss as i didn't want to damage it trying to get it out of the carboy. Figured floss might make it easier to remove from the carboy.

I'l have to figure out how to export the data to a google sheet. That seems like it would be pretty handy for records but i haven't figured it out yet.
 
If you go to the "blog" section of the Tilt website, they've got a lot of useful things there. This is the link from there for setting up your Google Sheet. I followed this process step by step exactly and got it to work. Most all of the steps I had no idea what I was doing, I just blindly followed. It works awesome for me. Each new fermentation, I just name my Tilt something related to the brew like "Amarillo IPA Mar-2018". When I check the box to log data to the cloud, I get a new Google Sheet created with that name and all the data for that batch.

https://tilthydrometer.com/blogs/news/easiest-way-yet-to-post-your-tilt-to-google-sheets
 
Ok. Still trying to work this thing out. I have an old phone set up in the ferm chamber with the tilt app open and the phone screen is set up stay on. I keep looking at brewstat.us every day on my phone and it only recorded 1 point about 18 hours ago. How often does the tilt record points to brewstat?
 
Rob2010SS said:
Ok. Still trying to work this thing out. I have an old phone set up in the ferm chamber with the tilt app open and the phone screen is set up stay on. I keep looking at brewstat.us every day on my phone and it only recorded 1 point about 18 hours ago. How often does the tilt record points to brewstat?
Click to expand...

I had data record every 15 minutes. I'm not sure what is happening in your set-up.

I followed the setup instructions and immediately the Tilt started sending data. Again, I am using an old iPhone that is set to never fall asleep, is attached to a charger, has a strong wifi connection and has the Tilt app opened. I dimmed the screen to the lowest position. The screen is always on.

I look at the data on the google sheet through a computer rather than through the phone.
 
So i think i have it figured out, as far as recording data. When i would check the data from my every day phone, it wasn't being recorded until i accessed the tilt app from my every day phone. I logged into brewstat on the phone that is in the ferm chamber and retyped in the cloud address and it appears to be working now. Next up is setting up the google sheet
 
Rob2010SS said:
One more question on this. Do you need to have the screen of whatever device is logging data with the tilt stay on? Or will it continue logging data if the screen goes to sleep?
Click to expand...
I used my Samsung tablet running the Tilt app on my first brew with it but then bought a Raspberry Pi Zero W for ~$30 and loaded the Tiltpi image on it. It is cofigured through a web app so that I don't have a monitor even connected to it. I use the google sheet logging option so I can see logging output anywhere. Easy peasy and it works great.
 
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Used mine for the first time on Saturday to check in on the gose I brewed. Have an old cell phone logging data and uploading to Google Sheets. Pretty cool device.

upload_2018-10-1_10-13-59.png
 
Is the data stored on the Tilt device itself at all?

If a person wasn't interested in uploading the data to the cloud, could they just access the data intermittently by launching the Tilt app on a smart device when they wanted to, and have the full range of data upload from the tilt to the app?

Or is the data ONLY stored in the cloud, and doing what I've described would mean all you could see was the temperature and gravity at that one point in time?
 
It does not store on your device or in the app. The app just opens up a gateway to send data to the cloud. You can send it to a generic Tilt account, it to a Google Sheet set up in your account. If it doesn't write to the cloud, you're limited to just viewing the current gravity and temperature reading.
 
dinokath said:
Used mine for the first time on Saturday to check in on the gose I brewed. Have an old cell phone logging data and uploading to Google Sheets. Pretty cool device.
Click to expand...
I'm a certified data geek, love looking at charts 'n' tables and stuff.
Did that go from 1.044 or so to 1.018 in two days?? And the temperature is cycling up and down like clockwork, what is that?
 
surista said:
I'm a certified data geek, love looking at charts 'n' tables and stuff.
Did that go from 1.044 or so to 1.018 in two days?? And the temperature is cycling up and down like clockwork, what is that?
Click to expand...

Yep, it sure did drop like that in SG. Incidentally, I broke the carboy (in 12 freaking years of brewing, never broke one before) last night which left a nice hole in the top. Crazy break really!



Anyway, since it ruined the batch and had never done a gose before, I took a sample and a taste. Sample was at 65F and read right at 1.018, which shows the Tilt was right on target. It was sad to dump the beer, it was pretty tasty honestly, but that glass from the outside was now on the inside and I didn't want to take a chance contaminating the beer with something nasty that was lurking on the outside of the carboy. I ALMOST grabbed a keg and said screw it but decided against it.

The temp cycling up and down is from the fermentation chamber. It's set to 65 and it kicks on when it hits 66 and off at 64. I have a temp probe in a thermowell in the brew controlling the fermentation chamber. The Tilt just saves the data for me.
 
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dinokath said:
Yep, it sure did drop like that in SG. Incidentally, I broke the carboy (in 12 freaking years of brewing, never broke one before) last night which left a nice hole in the top. Crazy break really!



Anyway, since it ruined the batch and had never done a gose before, I took a sample and a taste. Sample was at 65F and read right at 1.018, which shows the Tilt was right on target. It was sad to dump the beer, it was pretty tasty honestly, but that glass from the outside was now on the inside and I didn't want to take a chance contaminating the beer with something nasty that was lurking on the outside of the carboy. I ALMOST grabbed a keg and said screw it but decided against it.

The temp cycling up and down is from the fermentation chamber. It's set to 65 and it kicks on when it hits 66 and off at 64. I have a temp probe in a thermowell in the brew controlling the fermentation chamber. The Tilt just saves the data for me.
Click to expand...
Damn that sucks. How'd the carboy break?
 
beernutz said:
Those are some oddly consistent temperature fluctuations between 64 and 66 degrees.
Click to expand...

That's what solid construction will give you! :rock:

It's not THAT consistent but yeah, it's pretty steady and I'm pretty happy about that! Isn't that the primary objective? Here's a shot of my fermentation chamber. It doubles as a workbench too. Love that thing.



I reused the pink insulation from my Son of A Fermentation Chiller build. Reduce, reuse, recycle!
 
Rob2010SS said:
Damn that sucks. How'd the carboy break?
Click to expand...

So..... notice how the gravity kind of settled out? Well, yesterday after it sat at at the same SG for a day, I decided it intercede. I was giving the carboy a rousing and it tapped the other carboy. When I say tapped, I mean it just ever so slightly tapped. The spot where it cracked was the 'seam' where the sides joined each other and then the top. It was a one in a 1000 tap. I've had this thing for 12 years and have tapped it like this a few times before without a problem. I just got really unlucky this time. A real bummer.

I am really lucky I didn't bathe myself in beer and shards of glass!
 
Mothman said:
Is the data stored on the Tilt device itself at all?

If a person wasn't interested in uploading the data to the cloud, could they just access the data intermittently by launching the Tilt app on a smart device when they wanted to, and have the full range of data upload from the tilt to the app?

Or is the data ONLY stored in the cloud, and doing what I've described would mean all you could see was the temperature and gravity at that one point in time?
Click to expand...

You may have a few more options to log data from Tilt, some cloud-based and others on your network:

Tiltbridge + Fermentrack: A little soldering gets you a way to go from Tilt Bluetooth to WiFi and then to your RPi, app or whatever. The Fermentrack project can also do the data logging if you don't want to use the native Tilt app. I plan to give the Bridge solution a try, or Pi Zero at least.

Brewfather.app I hope this app is finally the Beersmith-killer I think it is. So completely fed up dealing with the ancient file & folder interface on Beersmith and came across this project the other day via Hoprod Garage on Instagram. I already love this app's recipe features and the fact that I can use it on any device is a big upside over Beersmith 3's locking you into two devices and paying extra for the app. That's all great but what's next level about it is they have BrewPiLess and Tilt support built in already. So, regardless of how you want to log - WiFi or Bluetooth on your phone - this app pulls it all into to your session data. Very comprehensive app walkthrough/review on YouTube.

As other's have said, Google Sheets is another solid option. Obvious benefits aside, if you still want super slick charts updated in real-time it's dead simple to use Google Data Studio to make it look like you coded your very own app. A quick search around the forums you will find a half-dozen other visualization tools that you can plug Sheets or other log files into.

Have done way too much research into this stuff lately. Hope it helps!
 
Mothman said:
Is the data stored on the Tilt device itself at all?

If a person wasn't interested in uploading the data to the cloud, could they just access the data intermittently by launching the Tilt app on a smart device when they wanted to, and have the full range of data upload from the tilt to the app?

Or is the data ONLY stored in the cloud, and doing what I've described would mean all you could see was the temperature and gravity at that one point in time?
Click to expand...
You can use a raspberry pi--I bought a Zero W kit for ~$30 on amazon--and install the TiltPi image on it to connect to the Tilt. You only have to edit one setup file on the RPi's SD card so it will connect to your WIFI and then as soon as it detects a Tilt bluetooth signal you can set up logging through it's web interface. You can store log data on the RPi and also set up cloud based logging. I'm doing both right now.
 
This seems awesome. What's the distance the Bluetooth will work on this? How far outside the fermentation chamber can I have my Raspberry Pi?
 
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It depends on your house structure and where you have the Tilt. In a PET fermentor in my unfinished basement, I was able to read the Tilt on the second floor of my house, in the room at that end of house.

When it was in my stainless fermentor, I had to be 10-20 feet away, in the basement.
 
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ClearedHot said:
Brewfather.app I hope this app is finally the Beersmith-killer I think it is. So completely fed up dealing with the ancient file & folder interface on Beersmith and came across this project the other day via Hoprod Garage on Instagram. I already love this app's recipe features and the fact that I can use it on any device is a big upside over Beersmith 3's locking you into two devices and paying extra for the app. That's all great but what's next level about it is they have BrewPiLess and Tilt support built in already. So, regardless of how you want to log - WiFi or Bluetooth on your phone - this app pulls it all into to your session data. Very comprehensive app walkthrough/review on YouTube.
Click to expand...
I found his to be very true. The water calculator on Brewfather is something worth checking out too.
 

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