Hanna Beer Refractometer

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JonA

Hanna Beer Refractometer

Post by JonA » Wed Sep 27, 2017 9:22 am

Has anyone played with this? Description reads.. Digital Refractometer for Brewing measures the sugar content of wort and converts it to degrees Plato based on the tables maintained by the International Commission for Uniform Methods of Sugar Analysis (ICUMSA) and the American Society of Brewing Chemists (ASBC)

I thought Plato was basically the same as Brix so why does it use tables? or is it doing some sugar adjustment internally.
Any refractometer gurus out there ...

www.hannainstruments.co.uk/hi-96841-dig ... ewing.html

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Jocky
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Re: Hanna Beer Refractometer

Post by Jocky » Wed Sep 27, 2017 6:56 pm

My understanding is that Brix and Plato are practically the same (as is Balling), with some very small refinements in how the sugar content is calculated (I am presuming from the refractive index).

The refinements are small - see here for a conversion http://braukaiser.com/documents/Kaiser_ ... _table.pdf
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IPA
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Re: Hanna Beer Refractometer

Post by IPA » Wed Sep 27, 2017 7:17 pm

Note is says measures wort ! Don't expect to measure gravity after you have added yeast. A Chinese one for about £20 works for me. Invaluable on brew days.
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Re: Hanna Beer Refractometer

Post by Fil » Wed Sep 27, 2017 8:57 pm

iirc someone in here has one of these and thinks very highly of it.. though for me its not worth the extra for pin point accuracy on values im using to monitor progress with during the mash or boil. Probably worth the investment if your brewing commercially and your gravity readings are crucial elements in calculating the tax mans cut tho.
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JonA

Re: Hanna Beer Refractometer

Post by JonA » Thu Sep 28, 2017 9:24 am

Fil wrote:
Wed Sep 27, 2017 8:57 pm
iirc someone in here has one of these and thinks very highly of it.. though for me its not worth the extra for pin point accuracy on values im using to monitor progress with during the mash or boil. Probably worth the investment if your brewing commercially and your gravity readings are crucial elements in calculating the tax mans cut tho.
Yes Hanna stuff is good IMO. Quite an expensive little beastie - usual story $175 in the US, £280 over here !

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Aleman
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Re: Hanna Beer Refractometer

Post by Aleman » Thu Sep 28, 2017 10:29 am

I have the milwaukee version it's brilliant! . . .I have compared it to an actual Hanna one, and apart from the colour it's pretty identicaL. . . even down to the Made in Romania embossing on the case :o ... I got mine from the States on eBay and it was considerably cheaper than the Hanna

Mr Uppity

Re: Hanna Beer Refractometer

Post by Mr Uppity » Thu Sep 28, 2017 4:12 pm

I have a Hanna HI96801, simple to use and gives the digital readout. However on a homebrew scale I find myself more often than not using a cheap hand held refractometer, which gives me the ballpark I need, so a bit of an expensive toy for homebrew standards. When I bought mine there were 4 options:-

HI-96801 - Sucrose sugar
HI-96802 - Fructose sugar
HI-96803 - Glucose sugar
HI-96804 - Inverted sugar

So it would appear they have bought out the Plato model with a beer label on it, mine was about £120 when i bought it, they appear to nearly doubled in price since then, might be worth me selling mine on.

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Re: Hanna Beer Refractometer

Post by beer taster » Fri Sep 29, 2017 7:39 pm

I too have a HI-96801 I think they're great and use it all the time. They are expensive (I paid around £100) but I got fed up of trying to work out the exact readings on cheap hand held refractometers. You can never have enough gadgets :D

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