Can anyone confirm my last question? I also have another question. When going from primary to secondary or bottling bucket using an auto siphon what do people do to keep the crap at the bottom of the fermenter from transfering buckets?
I dont know about the brand/seller/
shipping price, but the eBay Brix you linked to earlier has 0-32 scaling, ATC, and is for brewing (so probably shows a % alcohol value in the viewfinder, vs. some other obscure value), so = check.
The links you found are exactly what I copied from/tweaked in my own spreadsheet. (You can just look at the html source code to get those differing calcs, that is only if you want to modify the XLS and reconcile/understand all the various calcs you will find out there, and maybe craft up something for pre-boil gravity but all that detail should be its own thread.)
And yes to your last question, no Brix change = no beer change (even if calibration is off although Ive never had a calibration problem. Brix has matched hydrometer OG perfectly for many years. In fact, I giggle every time it matches, so I keep the hydrometer around).
All that being said, relative to an exacting FG calc, I should make it clear that Im more of a .05 guy, if you know what I mean. I could really care less if my beer is 7.0 or 6.5 alcohol, for example, as long as it tastes good. I dink around with the numbers, just as a mater of course, but more exacting people may not as amenable to the luxuries of the Brix.
Indeed, using math in general when homebrewing seems like cheating to me. Im not trying to auto-land a plane; Im trying to hit a baseball. So by analogy, when you throw a baseball straight up in the air, and as it falls, take your bat and crack the living **** out of it, and it goes towering far and long, and you have that bat-feel resonation & swing form THAT is how I calculate beer making. Completely internal, based on experience. We dont need no stinking calculators to brew beer! (if I may coin a phrase)
Relative to the racking cane, Grimm & Mirage gave you the straight dope: canes have a little black cap that effectively raises the end of the tube up a bit so that some measure of bottom liquid will remain left behind. As does Mirage, Ill tip the source bucket to pool more liquid, but Ive never lifted the cane up to gain extra clearance. Im happy to get a bita extra bottom-stuff. It makes my beer go to 11.
