To talk about this item, I couldn’t use the ol’ rectangle to highlight it.
Not sure what kind of shape that is, but it gets the job done.
This is an item that you may not have seen before, unless you have random, esoteric instruments of measurement sitting around the house.
A hydrometer is used to measure the specific gravity or density of a liquid as compared to water.
If you look at the photo, there are two things highlighted. The plastic cylinder on the right is used to pull a sample of your brew. The other item, the glass tube with the black tip, is placed inside the plastic cylinder and allowed to float in the sample.
The glass tube has a weight at the bottom of it and scale visible near the top. When the tube comes to a stop after floating in the liquid for a few seconds, you can line up the top of the liquid with the scale on the tube. The reading on the hydrometer tube can be recorded as your wort’s specific gravity before fermentation.
For your reference: Water has a mark of 1.000. My maple porter had a measurement of 1.080…which means my wort was denser than water due to the addition of a lot of malt and maple syrup. Note: We actually didn’t use a hydrometer to get this reading. We used Mike refractometer to get this reading. These are more expensive devices but make measuring specific gravity a whole lot easier.
Taking a reading before and after fermentation can give you an idea of how much alcohol is in your beer. We will get into that calculation in another post.
Even though a hydrometer doesn’t help you to make beer, it can help you to better understand your beer.
Here are some other articles for homebrewing beginners:
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