This is the best explanation on reading the SG on my hydrometer. Thanks so much for breaking this down for me! I'm on my second batch of noble grape wine, and my first batch of mead and now I know what the heck I am looking at! (I'd been guessing, and fortunately guessing correctly, but it's good to know how to do this without guesswork!)
Thanks! I've always been curious about the hydrometer and have, for economic reasons declined to approach the use of one in my attempts to brew. However, I recently found one for $1 at the Bins store! I thank you for the introduction to the scale .... but I've not yet seen the need for safety glasses.
After all the mead videos I’ve watched about hydrometers I’ve finally found a teacher who explains this correctly according to the math we need to know.
So many videos go into how the hydrometer works, and the theories behind SG and calculating your ABV, but they don't actually tell you how to read the markings on the hydrometer itself! Thank you for you quick and to the point video.
Thank you so much, miss Rachel! I am new to brewing, and I have been baffled by this. I really appreciate the way that you broke it down in your clear, easy to understand explanation. You are a genius!
Wasn't using this for distilling, and temperature wasn't a factor so I don't care that it wasn't mentioned. My brother needed to use a hydrometer for a project, and this video broke it all down so perfectly. Watched many other videos before this, but this one was by far the best. Thank you for this!!
+AuroraMarija Thank you! Just in case you do need to correct for temperature, here is a temperature correction converter: www.brewersfriend.com/hydrometer-temp/
Well done! I thought I was reading my hydrometer correctly, but I wasn't sure, as nobody seemed to have explained it as well as you. Thanks! Very well explained indeed :)
Thank you Ma'am. You explained this in such lucid way. Please make a video on these topics too - - How does Brix scale work, and its connection to gravity scale - if hydrometer is used to measure alcohol content, how should it be used, and what will be its error % ?
Thank you so much for explaining that I have gone through so many different videos on high dramas it's unreal enjoy the 1st person to explain it properly
Thank you so much for this clear explanation. I work in dialysis and we have to use the hydrometer to check the specific gravity of our acid batches; no one ever explained to me in detail how to read it precisely!
My video is intended to educate on the use of a hydrometer to measure specific gravity. It is not intended to educate on conversions between % alcohol and proof. For that purpose, I suggest a conversion website such as that Cleave Books (you can search for this on your Google bar).
I have a question I started some mash two weeks ago. Started with a couple big cans of peaches 2 pounds of brown sugar 2 tablespoons of yeast. And 2 gallons of water. Hydrometer was floating up out of the wash. So I ground some Corn and cook that up rinse that down with a couple gallons of water and 4 pounds of sugar it’s sprinkled a bunch of yeast on it again. Week later hydrometer still floating out the top of the Wash. Is that right?
......so what I'd like to know is how to translate the reading to tell us what the alcohol percentage is...I'm puzzled why one would want to measure the sugar content in water when it would be already known how much was added,, the taste test tells you if the sugar has all been consumed.
So if 1.000 as the density of water is at the top, why are the next measurements .010 then .020? They seem to be increasing, but from 1 to .01 is a decrease? Could you please help! I'm doing a lab next week, and we're using homemade hydrometers.
Good morning Camille, hydrometers are measuring the density of a solution relative to water. Thus, the more solute (sugar in this case) that is dissolved in the water, the higher the hydrometer 'bobs/floats'. So, the readings as you go down from 1 get bigger and bigger. They go from 1.000 to 1.002, 1.004, 1.006... These larger readings indicate more dissolved solute! Also, the larger the readings, the more potential a must has to produce alcohol. Sometimes, after a solution has produced alcohol, the hydrometer will sink. In some cases it will sink to readings below 1.
suppose my og is 1.060 and my fg is .997,does this mean i never had 60 pts potential alc but rather had 63pts that i could not possibly know about till fermentation was over?
This means that you began by having the potential to produce ~7.8% alcohol but then you "outproduced your potential". That is, your specific gravity dipped slightly below 1.000. Thus, you produced slightly more than 7.8%!
yes precisely my point,,what good is a hydrometer if it wont tell you the full potential? i know there is not that much below 1.000 but who knows if it might be off the scale too if there is enough sugar that got converted
can you explain how is it possible that you ever get a reading below 1.000 ? for example if you start with water at 1.000 reading and you add sugar and get 1.040 and on the final reading you get 0.995 where did this come from and how is this even possible? its as if alcohol was added or created out of nowhere in the liquid
Thank you for your great question. The scale is based on relative density of liquids (compared to pure water). Thus, pure water has a specific gravity of 1.000. If a solution contains a lot of ethanol, ethanol is less dense than water so the specific gravity may be less than 1.000. Thanks for asking great questions!
@@rmimwatson i am still not sure i understand ,, it is one thing to start putting alc in the water and saturate it enough to make the hydrometer level drop below 1.000 but another to have a starting gravity that does not show this amount to begin with,, as i said in my example if we have a starting gravity of 1.040 this means we have a denser liquid because of sugar that will turn to alc after fermentation and the most you can produce will be 40 gravity points so you can reach 1.000 if it ferments all the way down but how is it possible to go below 1.000??? if you end up with .995 this looks like you porduced 5 extra gravity points from where???
you never replied back to my last post? i am asking if my potential alc is 40gp but the final reading says .995 then would this not mean i made 45 gp of alc and if so where did they extra 5gp come form? 40gp fully converted would give me 5.25%abv with the fully converted sugar but 45gp would give me 5.9% so where did the extra 5gp worth of alc come from and is that what it actually means if i had to calculate? would i need to say 45gp or only 40gp? so do we or dont we count anything below 1.000?
incredibly uninformative. this video says nothing at all that i did not already know and i know very little about how to use a hydrometer. someone needs to make a video explaining only the god damn alcahol by volume measurements and what all of the percentages equal from percent to proof. like 50% = 80 proof and so on and so forth, your video is exactly the same as every other hydrometer video ive ever seen
