Beer Forum

Has anyone bought and used one of these? There was a write up on the Brewometer in this months Zymurgy. Looks cool. Maybe a gadget I may not be able to help myself from getting.

http://www.newellinstruments.com/products/Brewometer.html

I don't know about that thing. I looked at digital refractometers online and couldn't find one for less than $500, this company claims that they have one that is a refractometer, interfaces directly with your computer, and includes some kind of software for only $170. They sell the software individually for $75, so you're looking at a $95 digital refractometer with a USB interface? How accurate could it possibly be? What truck was it boosted from? Who could out-china China?

Also the only photo they have of the product is thumbnail size and the same for each product with a different name logo (poorly) MS Painted onto each product; they don't describe how it is used; they sell direct through paypal, not a vendor, and there is no traditional contact information for them (just a submit form, and the city and state they're located at, not even an email address).

Maybe they just had their kid put the website together, but it looks fishy to me.

Besides how far removed do you want to be from knowing whats going on with your beer? You don't learn anything unless you have some amount of hands-on with your calculations. I'd get a traditional refractometer and one of the popular brewing programs you can find on the internet, or you could create an excel sheet to do the same thing for you pretty easily.

...and the disposable plastic pipets they sell for a dollar each can be had on ebay for about $5 for a bag of 50.

So, is that something like a re-frato-mate-er?

Brancid wrote:So, is that something like a re-frato-mate-er?

I don't geddit?

every time D tries to say refractometer it sounds like she's talking about some sort of weird new tomato strain. It was best on the first of the NHC shows. Ok, maybe it wasn't that funny

Well they seem 2 be a ligit company lil old looking web page but i find a server in sunnydale cali with there company name. Looks like they are making there own sensors in house they do refigeraton testing so somebody has some know how there.

Brancid wrote:every time D tries to say refractometer it sounds like she's talking about some sort of weird new tomato strain. It was best on the first of the NHC shows. Ok, maybe it wasn't that funny

Gawdit.