Kegged my Best Bitter.
What are you doing with homebrew today?
- Thread starter BOB357
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Love your stuff man great thinking if you have kegs spare!
I just checked gravity, smell and taste on my Azacca Pale Ale. Since all were satisfactory, I added a healthy 1 ounce dry hops charge of Azacca, Citra and Mosaic. To be bottled soon in the coming week.
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My first closed transfer. It's slow but no oxy.
Checked on the Chocolate Oatmeal stout again today. Temp's up another degree from yesterday, but still below 70 (67 today). Started out at 65, dropped one degree overnight, now it's on the rise. Nice looking krausen visible through the fermenter wall, something I haven't been able to see before. Can't really tell if there's significant accumulation in the catch ball yet. This stuff's got a pretty dark trub, so it may be hard to see or tell if the ball is full of trub or still beer/wort. Any suggestions when I should pull the catch ball to collect the yeast and clean it out? I'm figuring about a week, after things slow down just a bit. Bubbling pretty good today, about 3 seconds between what looks more like burps than bubbles. By next brew, I will have added a sampling spigot. Then I can pull a sample when activity slows to see where it actually is. Easy enough to watch temperature, though.
Does anyone know of a PC based application for the Tilt or other bluetooth/wifi devices available? I've looked around and everything I see wants to use my phone. I don't want it on my phone, but would love to track progress with a PC. That's probably the biggest roadblock to me buying better gadgetry.
Meant to ask but forgot. Will a spectrometer help with sampling sizes, and what all will I learn from that? I'm sure I still need to use an old-school hydrometer to check final gravity, but it wouldn't hurt to be able to do some process sampling through the ferment.
Does anyone know of a PC based application for the Tilt or other bluetooth/wifi devices available? I've looked around and everything I see wants to use my phone. I don't want it on my phone, but would love to track progress with a PC. That's probably the biggest roadblock to me buying better gadgetry.
Meant to ask but forgot. Will a spectrometer help with sampling sizes, and what all will I learn from that? I'm sure I still need to use an old-school hydrometer to check final gravity, but it wouldn't hurt to be able to do some process sampling through the ferment.
I do like what Citra hops do to the taste. That's shaping up to be a really nice pale. Let us know how it turns out. Too bad there's no 'scratch n sniff' or taste test web pages, huh?
Tilt needs a Bluetooth device to talk to. I use an Amazon tablet
Refractometers are great for smaller sample sizes, but can sometimes be imprecise. You get what you pay for
I use a tiltbridge to receive the bluetooth and send data to wifi. It works with Brewers Friend out of the box: https://tiltbridge.readthedocs.io/en/master/User Guide/index.html
So a tablet (Fire, Ipad, etc) will work, but still, that ain't quite what I'm looking for. What I'd really like is a way to collect the data on a local machine, and send that to BF if I want to, or hide if it embarrasses me.
I have a laptop with bluetooth and wifi that doesn't have much else to do but sit and chat with my beer process. I use it for the brew session when I'm making a batch but could easily use something a little more portable like the tablet for that. Still looking for my old Fire which is the original 7" HD Kindle Android just for that purpose. What I don't know if there is or can't find, is a Windows 10 based driver that will work with the Tilt or any other brand. I'm not brand loyal (yet), so that will probably have a deciding factor in what I select along with the opinions and suggestions from the good folks in here.
An imprecise refractometer and a smaller sample is better than 200ml to load up the cylinder for the hydrometer every time, though. That's a half bottle of beer for a sample for one piece of data (SG), which cannot be put back in the fermenter at risk of contamination. Even one sample a day means 7 bottles of beer poured down the drain in a two-week period. Dunno 'bout you guys, but I prefer to drink the stuff I bought and went through the trouble to make.
The only other option that I see for smaller samples is a smaller diameter cylinder and smaller hydrometer that I probably can't read. The hydrometer needs to free-float for accuracy, and there simply isn't a huge variety of sizes available. While accuracy of the spectrometer might be an issue during fermentation, it would still let me double check what a tilt or something else was telling me and verify that the yeastie beasties are asleep, and the Tilt wasn't just stuck with krausen on the side. That belt and suspenders kinda way of thinking.
I'm certainly open to suggestions and recommendations for the spectrometer. I don't wanna break the bank, but I like quality tools and instruments.
The tilt can talk bluetooth. If you have a device that speaks both bluetooth and wifi (Raspberry pi zero, old phone/tablet/computer) then the data can be sent to Google docs. From there, a pc can see it, and there are other possibilities
Just remember that a tilt is not absolutely accurate for gravity; instead, it is relatively accurate: the actual gravity may be incorrect, but the amount of change (or, more precisely, the lack of change) is spot on.
In other words, it definitely shows when the specific gravity has stopped changing and primary fermentation is over. But you can't count on that reading of final gravity being accurate.
Just remember that a tilt is not absolutely accurate for gravity; instead, it is relatively accurate: the actual gravity may be incorrect, but the amount of change (or, more precisely, the lack of change) is spot on.
In other words, it definitely shows when the specific gravity has stopped changing and primary fermentation is over. But you can't count on that reading of final gravity being accurate.
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Used a step bit, a puller, and silver solder to install a connector on the kettle, and finally have my leakproof three-part ball valve installed. Planning to brew this weekend and won’t have to pour/aim my five gallon kettle at a small corny keg opening. Looking forward to a civilized transfer to the fermenter, without two quarts landing on the floor of the garage. My garage has been mopped with beer too many times!
I feel like I have my refractometer dialed in pretty well with my hydrometer, so I am comfortable taking most of my measurements with the refractometer. On brew day, I use both hydrometer and refractometer, but after brew day, it’s refractometer time. From the start, I just decided that I am going to rely on my patient nature, and so 3 weeks is my primary fermentation time. Unless I have some reason to check before 3 weeks, like to add dry hops, then I’m just gonna let it ride. After 3 weeks, I like to pull a small sample (~35 mL) for aroma, flavor and gravity. Usually at that time, it’s pretty easy to decide how to proceed.
Exactly what I am expecting. I already know there are a few things that affect the accuracy such as sticky Krausen or bubbles. But it'll tell me when the yeast has gone dormant, and I won't have leave a brew in the fermenter any longer than necessary. It'll also give me some performance data for different yeasts and temperature effects.
Revived my old kindle fire hd tonight. Almost forgot how to use the bloody thing.
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So far my Tilt has been accurate on OG every time. FG gets off by a few points due to krausen scum on the device
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Meant to ask but forgot. Will a spectrometer help with sampling sizes, and what all will I learn from that? I'm sure I still need to use an old-school hydrometer to check final gravity, but it wouldn't hurt to be able to do some process sampling through the ferment.[/QUOTE]
I’ve been using a digital refractometer for over a year and it works great. Two drops of distilled water to calibrate, push a button, wipe clean, two drop sample, push a button to read, done. Not a cheap toy though. I think I spent $125 and they’re probably more now with the Covid/Supply chain markup. If you’re considering this route, make sure your searching for Brix refractometers.
I’ve been using a digital refractometer for over a year and it works great. Two drops of distilled water to calibrate, push a button, wipe clean, two drop sample, push a button to read, done. Not a cheap toy though. I think I spent $125 and they’re probably more now with the Covid/Supply chain markup. If you’re considering this route, make sure your searching for Brix refractometers.
I would love to upgrade to a digital refractometer. Can't quite justify the expense yet
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Indeed!
