Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Well, there has been a thread or 2 on hydrometers but none answered the specific question: Is there a hydrometer available scaled specifically for washes intended to be distilled?

I have 2 hydrometers, one intended for beer, and one wine and beer.

Both do the job (just) but both have compressed scales in the area of interest - the final SG.

I recently had what must have been a stalled ferment (my first) but I didn't fully comprehend this until after I had hit the "close enough" button.

Basically it comes down to this, all my other ferments came down to below 1.00 - by how much? buggered if I know because, well, compressed scales and 62 year old eyes, but I have been getting close to the theoretical output for the amount of sugar used.

This "stalled" ferment came down to one paltry graduation above 1.00 - thinking that was close enough (or at least not worth the effort of trying to restart it) I threw it, along with the other 2 ferments, into the boiler.

While it was coming up to temp I decided to calculate the ABV% expecting it to be down 1 or 2% from the theoretical only to find it was not even than 60% of the theoretical!

Darn it I think that would have been worth trying to correct.

Of course in future I will be well aware of this gotcha but it would help if there was a version of the hydrometer that had an expanded scale in the area of interest - I doubt the physics of a hydrometer would allow the linearity of the scale to be different to what it is, so I expect the only solution is an elongated scale with a heavier "ballast" or something.

Does anyone know of such a thing?

Yah! seniors moment - I meant barely 80%,

Good question i dont know why they compress the fg area the way they do. I generally dont use a hydromter, i use the suck it and see aproach :whistle: if it aint bubbling or sticky when allowed to dry on a finger i run it and hope for the best. Generally this method works but I havd had a few failures..

Not sure about that.
But to make your life easier can you mark where your standard fg is, then at a quick glance you can tell if its above or below the norm :think:

Surely, if there is doubt, one could measure/weigh a clear sample of the wash, cook it at a temp below 90C (or whatever is a suitable temp) and when the vapor stops, weigh or measure whats left to determine the ABV?

You can buy HYDROMETER - FINAL GRAVITY but may be expensive and probably break just as easily .
Precisely read your finishing gravities in beer with this narrow-range, highly accurate hydrometer. The scale range is only .990-1.020, but the individual gradients are extra large allowing for an easy read.

wynnum1 wrote:You can buy HYDROMETER - FINAL GRAVITY

Any specific link/s where to get one, or is it a readily available thing?

Check out online brewing shops seems they are common 5sec search revealed 2 aus shops

I agree, HB shops should have what's needed if that range mentioned above is correct, but I have a question about what the wash is consisting of - is there different with start and finish values depending on what the wash is made of?

Nope just that on standard hydrometer the the area of the fg is squished up hard to get an exact mesurment of fg. But og is easy, so apparently there is an fg hydrometer were the fg end is stretched out for more accurate reading...

Is lightening (less weight) and elongating a hydrometer the answer?

Carbonator wrote:Is lightening (less weight) and elongating a hydrometer the answer?

I wouldn't mess with one. Some washes will have a higher final gravity due to the amount of unfermentables in it. Take a mollases wash for a perfect example. Or a heavy Belgian tripel beer wash. Never ferment to 1 or less.
Can still use the hydrometer though. When it doesn't go down over a few consecutive days its as finished as its gunna be.

wynnum1 wrote:You can buy HYDROMETER - FINAL GRAVITY but may be expensive and probably break just as easily .
Precisely read your finishing gravities in beer with this narrow-range, highly accurate hydrometer. The scale range is only .990-1.020, but the individual gradients are extra large allowing for an easy read.

That looks to be just the shot, thanks.

I don't normally care about the starting sg as I do mostly sugar washes and they seem very consistent compared to theory. The only vagary of a sugar based wash appears to be "has it finished?" and "if not why not?"

I actually don't normally care about final sg either as if it ferments to dry that's close enough, but this time the ferment was obviously not behaving itself and I wanted to know if it had stalled - it had but I should have done the calculations rather than thinking it was "good enough" - I think an expanded scale would have been more likely to give me cause to think (and that's always a good thing ;-)).

Thanks everyone.

as has been implied... you can buy them but they are 70 or 80 bucks...from the USA... ebay have them..search Final Gravity Hydrometer...they have heaps.

Or just take a pic on your phone & expand the photo... works for anything I can't see :handgestures-thumbupleft:

warramungas wrote:

Carbonator wrote:Is lightening (less weight) and elongating a hydrometer the answer?

I wouldn't mess with one. Some washes will have a higher final gravity due to the amount of unfermentables in it.

Good point, but it's friggen hard to know when two standard and different shop bought Hydrometers return different results. I'm getting 1000 and 995.

What do they read in water at 20c? Should be 1.000

Sam. wrote:What do they read in water at 20c? Should be 1.000

Yep, it is so obvious, but I didn't think of that - I'll check them now. :oops:

As long as you know how far out it is it won't matter too much, for your ABV calc you only need the difference between SG and FG.

But yeah would definitely be handy to know for certain when it's 990 :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Sadly, I didn't think of measuring SG (OG?), but at the moment, I have steady bubbling and wash (All DEX) is still sweet, but has that ethanol tang to it when I had a taste and spit test.

Just did the controlled test with water at 20C;



A wee bit of difference, but not as much as when in a wash. The variation is the physical size and weight between the two. The bigger and heavier one seems to be more accurate!