Refractometers

[ReaseB]

As a dedicated gear head, Im thinking about getting a refractometer. I'm curious as to how many of you are using one. I've been reading about them and I think it might be cool to have.

What do you think ?

Rease

[Homegrown Hops]

While I think that they can be very useful for getting an OG and can also be used for winemaking, I will be staying with my hydrometers. Using a refractometer to estimate your FG is not that accurate enough for me to shell out the duckets for one. IMHO

HH

[Lars]

A couple of my friends were surprised when I said that I don't have/use one. I guess I'm just old fashioned. Still using a hydrometer, and doing most of my calculations by hand with good old fashioned paper and pencil!

[sourbeerguy]

I have one and primarily use it to check runoff during sparging to figure out when to stop. It's much easier to check a drop or two than fill the hydrometer vial for this.

I still use a hydrometer for OG & FG. The alcohol throughs off the reading so checking FG doesn't work that well.

[bubrewer]

I take comfort and delight in having lots and lots of measurements in my brewing, so I am delighted with my recently acquired refractometer. I was able to quickly take gravity readings of all 3 batches of runoff from the mash (I batch sparge) just for fun.

The most useful moment, however, came when I was 10 min from the end of the boil and checked the gravity. Found it several points too high due to the breezy day increasing my boiloff rate. Since I could quickly take this reading and not have to spent 10 min chilling down a sample to use a hydrometer, I could easily add back 1/2 gallon of water and hit my gravity spot on.

For after fermentation, I use a bottling hydrometer that goes from 0.990 to 1.020. Seems I never use my regular (0.990-1.120) hydrometer any more as it's now got spider webs and dust on it.