I bought a scale from Costco to replace the one I used to have. I believe this scale is off, though, because when I weighed what was a pound of grain from my LHBS as well as a pound of grain from Northern Brewer, both showed 14 oz. I only realized this after using the same scale to measure priming sugar for 2 beers. One is a massive gusher, the other is as well, but part of that is that it’s a wheat beer.
I was just wondering what people have, because I obviously have to replace this scale. I’m also ordering a small gram scale to measure hops. Will likely use that for sugar as well.
I use a made in China digital scale. Read out is in pounds and ounces, ounces, and grams. Accuracy 0.5 grams, 0.5 ounces. Don’t have the box anymore for a brand name if it is different than the label on the scale. Label is Electronic Digital Scale, model EK5055. Bought it at Walmart for $20.00.
Before you buy a new scale check the accuracy of the scale with water in measuring cups just to be sure of the grain weights. It is possible there was an error in packaging and the grain weights were not the tare weight. Not to likely though with grains from two different sources.
I’ve been happy with ny American weigh scale, digital Kitchen scale with removable bowl. Accurate and easy to use and clean. Got it through walmart. Likely not made in America. About 23 bucks.
Mine is an OXO kitchen scale. The face pulls out, so I can use a large bin on top to contain grains. Only 11 lb capacity, so I have to sometimes weigh grain in batches. Kinda spendy, but I use it for other things, too. I also second the notion of calibrating with a pint of water. A pint’s a pound the whole world round…
For salts, I got a cheap AWS gram scale from Amazon. Seems to work well, and accurate (I weigh coins to calibrate).
I got lucky and scored a triple-beam balance from a laboratory. Sure, it doesn’t have a fancy readout, but due to its basic physics, it can always be relied upon for accuracy. If you have a electronic scale, be sure to get a couple of calibration masses so that you can rely on those scales too.
As always for the homebrew sized batches, have a scale that reads to a tenth of a gram and then the scale is useful for hop and mineral addition measurements.
At some point I’ll probably start looking to upgrade my scales, but what I have seems to work well for now.
My first scale was a postal type scale from Ebay, bought it new, supposedly accurate to 0.1 ounce or something like that but it’s good up to 66 lbs.
I used that for awhile as a primary scale, now I just use it for weighing grains and the like. My brother bought me a kitchen scale, Ozeri Touch II from Walmart that I use for priming sugar and hops. Rated for 18 lbs and supposed to be accurate to 0.05 ounce.
I normally prefer higher quality tools, but I have been extremely happy with a “digital hanging luggage scale” I got on ebay a couple years ago for less than $10. It can handle up to 40 kg, and I hang a bucket from it and use it to weigh out my base grains. I still use a kitchen type scale for additions less than 1lb.
There was great post back a few years, think 2009, between millerbrau and geronimo. Both guys used a 55 lb fishing scale with very good results, maybe millerbrau will chime in. For now I myself use a cheep 11 lb scale from Harbor Freight, got it about 6+ years ago for less than $20 with wall wort. When that unit goes I will be getting a fishing scale. I do 10 gallon batches so most of my grain bills are over 20 lbs. I use a gram scale for salts and hops.
The 50# fishing scale was Rapala and it worked great for grains. The only downfall was having to hang the bucket from something. Now days I use a shipping scale that we replaced at work because they say it wouldn’t calibrate anymore. I have had no problems with it. 0-50 pounds, 115V, tare function, so I put the bucket on and tare to zero. Then I dump the grains into the bucket.
For hops, I use a $10 gram scale from Amazon. It works great.
Keep in mind that you should size your scale such that you are not using it near the top or bottom 10% of its range.
I upgraded to the ultraship recently and have no regrets. It lets me weigh grains into a bucket still see the display, which was an issue with the physically smaller unit I picked up on Amazon. I still use the smaller unit for hops sometimes
