First outing for shiny boiler tomorrow!

[SteveD]

More recently i've been thinking that it's worth taking a hit on efficiency for a noticably better quality beer. What would the cost of a 10% reduction in effiency cost anyway.

Good point. I generally get high efficiencies (over 80%) but I currently do not check SG during sparge therefore I must be lucky. I keep promising myself I will buy a refractometer so I can more easily take SG measurements. I will probably find that I have been oversparging

Collect a little wort in a glass as you run off the mash tun, it's pretty easy to detect when it reaches 1006. if you collect the last gallon in a couple of measuring jugs, just discard the last one and you'll be getting rid of most of the stuff that's extracted from the grains that effects beer quality. No need for a refractometer.
If you hang on to the the last couple of liters you can use them during the boil if things havent quite gone to plan

eg for a 19L batch, once you have 4-4.5gals, start to collect the runnings in a jug, when the jug is full taste a sample of the run off, if it's sweet, pour the jug into the boiler, continue and repeat, if there are barely any sugars detectable put the jug to one side and only use if absolutely necessary. No need for cooling samples or firing up the pc to convert brix readings

Conversely you could say, why mess about with jugs, spillage, tasting and guessing, just get a refractometer. Simple, quick, easy, no guessing, no pondering. What do you need a pc for? As it's a conversion, pretty soon you'll have it in your head anyway . I don't need a PC to know that 0c is 32f, 65.5c is 150f, or 100c is 212f

[Vossy1]

Glad to see the shiny did it's job Jim

[Scooby]

Conversely you could say, why mess about with jugs, spillage, tasting and guessing, just get a refractometer. Simple, quick, easy, no guessing, no pondering. What do you need a pc for? As it's a conversion, pretty soon you'll have it in your head anyway . I don't need a PC to know that 0c is 32f, 65.5c is 150f, or 100c is 212f

And with the cheap meters we use mtl less accurate. Point is you don't need to spend 6x the cost of a hydrometer or even buy a hydrometer at all, you can use stuff you already have

[eskimobob]

Hmm - there seems to be some polarisation on the hydrometer/refractometer debate

I guess I really fancy a new brewing toy - the difficulty is deciding what toy to get/make... I also fancy making a stand (similar to the american brewing trees) to reduce the footprint of area requred to brew and also avoid having to lift boiling liquids. Overall though I think the refractometer is likely to improve my beer more and that's what's important really - I could and probably should use the hydrometer but lazyness/inertia takes over.