Brewometer

[BKBrews]

I got one the other day. I'm struggling to work out the temperature calibration. Firstly I noted that the tilt was out by 2 degrees compared to the STC (which I previously callibrated against 2 other digital thermoters). So I added a callibration point and it showed the correct temp for that particular point. But I am finding the tilt tends to sit on a fixed temperature even when my STC1000 is showing fluctuations. So I have a callibration point of Tilt: 21.1, actual 19.3. Then this morning I come out and my STC1000 is showing 19.8 but the tilt is still showing 19.3. Does it only change the display temp with fluctuations of 1 degree or something?

The brewometer is sitting in your wort and I'm assuming your STC is taped to the side of your fermenter or is in a thermowell? Or are they both in a bucket of water?

 

[Glomp]

The Brewometer works in 1degree fahrenheit units. Thus it jumps up and down by 0.4 degrees celsius.

The STC-1000 moves in 0.1 degree celsius units.

My thermopen moves in 0.1 C but I think its accuracy is supposed to be 0.5

 

[Moad]

I was just about ready to pull the trigger/ push the button on a few of these but wanted to first find out how people are tweaking the temps on fermentation. This kind of overlaps with BrewPi, this device would be awesome to tell me the SG and temp during ferment but if I can't adjust the temp on the fridge its usefulness is limited for me.

What do people use?

 

[Dubzie]

My self, i just set the temp of my STC, and adjust manually.

I haven't read the whole thread but i have come across this:
https://github.com/sibowler/brewpi-brewometer

Looks like you can setup a brewpi to read the brewometer to adjust your temps.

 

[Coodgee]

The brewometer is sitting in your wort and I'm assuming your STC is taped to the side of your fermenter or is in a thermowell? Or are they both in a bucket of water?

I've got one of the large SS probes that dips a couple of cm into the wort. The instructions said it was already calibrated and could be sanitised and dropped straight into the wort. Since I had a brew in the fridge I did just that. Looking forward to doing some testing in a bucket of water when this brew is done to get a good idea of the accuracy and precision.

The Brewometer works in 1degree fahrenheit units. Thus it jumps up and down by 0.4 degrees celsius.

The STC-1000 moves in 0.1 degree celsius units.

My thermopen moves in 0.1 C but I think its accuracy is supposed to be 0.5

Thanks that's good to know.

 

[Moad]

My self, i just set the temp of my STC, and adjust manually.

I haven't read the whole thread but i have come across this:
https://github.com/sibowler/brewpi-brewometer

Looks like you can setup a brewpi to read the brewometer to adjust your temps.

This is where I started looking, looks promising.

BrewPi are apparently working on gravity feature as well.

Sorry OT

 

[sluggerdog]

Thanks for the stir plate comments, alas they are not as cool as Brewometer because they aren't wireless... yet.

So I just pushed the button on a Brewometer. It was AUD$210.03 total. You guys talked me into it. When SWMBO finds out I'm blaming you guys :lol:

Michael,

Has yours turned up yet? I'm keen to hear your review. Very tempting.

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

Second make up a table sugar solution off 12g sugar to 88 ml of water. This will give you a SG of 1.048.

A better suggestion is to use 10g of sugar and 90 g of water (or 20g and 180g): 10 oP = 1.040, whereas 12 oP is not exactly 1.048 (the conversion is not linear, 12 oP is 1.0484)

Best practice is to bake the sugar at 120 oC to constant weight before making up the solution and to make sure the solution is at 20 oC.

 

[Glomp]

Thanks LC.

Next time I will use your suggestion and store a calibration solution so then its just a simple drop in and a quick check.

I had just read the BYO article and used that.

https://byo.com/mead/item/411-calibrate-your-hydrometer-and-fermenter-techniques

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

Sugar solutions have a bad habit of going off. You can make up a salt solution which will store well but to do it properly you'll need good scales

10 oP = 1.040 = 60.08 g/l salt.

Easy version is to take 12.0 g salt and add 195.7 g water.

* SInce salt is mildly hygroscopic, it must be baked to constant weight before adding.

 

[Meddo]

Hi LC, do you mind expanding on "baked to constant weight" please, re the salt?

I've got scales that will go close to that accuracy and access to RO water, and would like to check my two Carlton hydrometers (1.000-1.050 and 1.050-1.100). Any recommendations for blends to check those two against would also be much appreciated :icon_cheers:

Thank you,

 

[GibboQLD]

* Since salt is mildly hygroscopic, it must be baked to constant weight before adding.

Hi LC, do you mind expanding on "baked to constant weight" please, re the salt?

I believe LC is suggesting baking the salt to drive off any moisture, so that 12g of salt is actually 100% salt and not 11-point-something grams of salt and a small amount of water.

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

Yep, exactly that.

The way you check is to weigh the salt and the tray, bake it for a while, wheigh it again, bake it for a while, repeat until the weight stops changing; ergo "drying to constant weight".

BTW you should also make sure the salt is just salt: no "anti caking agent" which is added to some table salts. These are basically clays that absorb a hell of a lot of water.

 

[megabyte]

Michael,

Has yours turned up yet? I'm keen to hear your review. Very tempting.

It's arrived in the mail but I've been overseas and haven't had a change to open the package yet. I'll post a video when I get it working.

 

[huez]

For those interested there is a DIY version gaining popularity in Germany. Probably not as refined as the TILT but is basically the same concept from what i can gather. Looks pretty easy to put together, probably the tube being the hardest thing to find in australia
iSpindel https://github.com/universam1/iSpindel/blob/master/docs/README_en.md

 

[sluggerdog]

I ordered one of these a few weeks ago, it left the US quite quickly, arrived and again departed Sydney last Friday. Nothing more since then on the tracking.

Did anyone else who ordered one of these experience something similar with USPS or should I follow up to see what has happened?

3 days from the US to Sydney then now a week + to Brisbane seems fishy to me.

 

[sbowler]

I can't remember how long my Brewometer took to come, but I have had other packages sit in customs for 1-2 weeks before being cleared.

 

[sluggerdog]

I can't remember how long my Brewometer took to come, but I have had other packages sit in customs for 1-2 weeks before being cleared.

Ahh yeah, that's probably the delay. Waiting on customs. I wish they would show this on the tracking though.

I'm always so impatient waiting for new toys

 

[Glomp]

Mine was posted on the Friday in the US and arrived in Melbourne on the Sunday. It then took until Friday to move 160 kms to Bendigo

 

[n87]

Put the tracking number into Aus Post.
then give them a call if nothing comes up. the package is handed over to them once it enters Australia

 

[Rocker1986]

I had some ingredients sent from the US a couple of months back that got from there to Sydney in 3 or 4 days and then took another week and a half to get up here to Brisbane. It also said it departed Sydney the day or two after it arrived there. They take ******* ages, but you can probably expect it to arrive next week some time.

 

[sluggerdog]

I ordered one of these a few weeks ago, it left the US quite quickly, arrived and again departed Sydney last Friday. Nothing more since then on the tracking.

Did anyone else who ordered one of these experience something similar with USPS or should I follow up to see what has happened?

3 days from the US to Sydney then now a week + to Brisbane seems fishy to me.

My tilt arrived this morning, opened it up. Its flashing red on waking it up, I guess the battery is dead going by the FAQs on their website. A little disappointing. Maybe they should ship the battery out of the device.

 

[BKBrews]

My tilt arrived this morning, opened it up. Its flashing red on waking it up, I guess the battery is dead going by the FAQs on their website. A little disappointing. Maybe they should ship the battery out of the device.

My battery died 2 days into the 2nd batch... I've now got 3 spares on hand.

 

[sluggerdog]

My battery died 2 days into the 2nd batch... I've now got 3 spares on hand.

I ended up taking the battery out then replacing it again. Re-calibrated it in water and now I have a green flashing light. Maybe it got bumped or something in the delivery process causing the red flash.

I think I'll head out and grab some more batteries from jaycar today before using it for the first time. Just in case.

Cheers

 

[BKBrews]

I ended up taking the battery out then replacing it again. Re-calibrated it in water and now I have a green flashing light. Maybe it got bumped or something in the delivery process causing the red flash.

I think I'll head out and grab some more batteries from jaycar today before using it for the first time. Just in case.

Cheers

For what it's worth, I bought one Panasonic battery from teds cameras for $12.99 and then I got two O-Light batteries on eBay for $4 each with free delivery. They seem fine.

 

[pcqypcqy]

I'm sure this has been asked and answered already, but has anyone used this inside a stainless kegmenter?

 

[nickxb]

I'm sure this has been asked and answered already, but has anyone used this inside a stainless kegmenter?

Not a Kegmentor but I have in a SS brewbucket. Works fine even when the ferm freezer is closed.

 

[XaxisYcross]

I ordered two of these a while ago and used them on the two brews I have in my two fermenter fridge. On the strength of what they do I have ordered one more for my fermentasaurus in my other fridge.
I love the way I can track the progress of the fermentation using brewstat.us and how that allows you to upload the .xml file for the recipe. This gives the interface a lovely, detailed feel to it rather than simply the graph or chart using Google sheets, which is pretty cool anyway.

I have found the temp readings to be pretty bang on and as far as I can see the SG readings seem to correlate with hydrometer readings.

But...

On both of these brews I have had times where the SG would rise and fall. In one of the brews, a sweet stout using wy1084, the sg dropped crazy quick and ended up flatlining at 1.021. I wasn't sure if that was an issue with the Tilt at first but this was from a Cheeky Peek FWK and the FG was meant to be 1.023 so that solved that.
My other brew however is a Blue Moon clone using 3944 Belgian Wit. This one has baffled me. The SG has tended downwards over a week but with some not insignificant rises in gravity at times. Like I will check it one time and it might be 1.017 and then it will have gone up to 1.023 for example. Not like single points but 5 or 6 points. It got to the point where it was hovering somewhere between 1.013 and 1.019 so I pitched another starter. And when I opened the lid there was still a hella crazy krausen sitting there waving at me. Pitched it anyway and raised fridge temp to 23 and it dropped further but the ups and downs are still occuring. This makes me wonder whether in fact foam does actually affect some of the readings of the Tilt.
The brew can be seen here https://www.brewstat.us/brew/532/the-second-blue-moon
The graph looks reasonably normal but there are plenty of speedbumps along the way.

Any thoughts or has anyone else with a Tilt experienced this? Could it be a calibration issue?
Cheers.

 

[Chridech]

I'm sure this has been asked and answered already, but has anyone used this inside a stainless kegmenter?

Yes, mostly works fine, but range to smartphone is only about 3 metres from inside a fridge. Also when cold crashing under pressure the readings go awry. Gravity reads 6 to 8 points lower than prior to chilling.

 

[megabyte]

Xaxis, could it be resting against the side of the fermenter at times? I am concerned this could make it sit more vertical and read artificially high values.