Wednesday 16 February 2011

Calibration of Home Brew Equipment

When you purchase say a fermenting bucket for example, they usually include a scale in 5ltr increments printed on the side. These are great as a rough guide but for our home brewing purposes we really require these measurements to be as accurate as possible.

You may find that you follow the instructions below and find that the measurments on the side are pretty accurate but even so it is worth the effort for peace of mind. There is nothing worse than a watery beer kit.

Calibration is pretty simple. All you need is a good size kitchen measuring jug and some good quality kitchen scales.

Place your empty measuring jug on the scales. If possible (with digital scales) reset the scales to zero with the empty jug remaining in situ. As cubic 1ltr of water = 1kg we now pour in 1kg of water and mark the measuring jug for further use. (If you have a large jug it is speedier to measure out 5 litres of water and mark the jug accordingly.)

We now carefully fill the jug to the mark and pour into the fermenter marking the fermenter in 5 Litre increments with a permanent marker. (It is not important to mark all the lower increments although it does stop you losing count of where you are.) Once 20litres has been added to your fermenter it is worth marking each litre increment.

You should now have an accurately calibrated fermenter and measuring jug.

You may also want to do the same with your boiler using exactly the same process.

No comments:

Post a Comment