Tilt hydrometer question?

Hello I have a question for people that use the Tilt Hydrometer? Would a Tilt fit into a 5gal glass carboy see I use a 5gal carboy to ferment 3gal batch’s

Check here.

Yes it will. I tried it with mine.

Yes it fits.

@Hardbrewer123 Thank you for the timely thread!! The wife has been asking me for gift ideas for my upcoming birthday.

Now to see if the suggestion takes…

I really like mine, very accurate and nice for checking temp …all over Bluetooth without disturbing my beer.

Just to resurrect this thread… I’ve been experiencing some difficult with my tilt lately. My initial brew should have been near 1.065, my tilt read 1.05. I thought maybe I just sucked at brewing beer and was a little bummed. Well 2.5 days later and the tilt is reading 1.009… no way in hell did it go that fast. My idea is that maybe I needed to calibrate it better (it looked fine to me with water being 0.997) but who knows. Maybe I’ll still use the formula to calculate my abv, since it looks like the tilt will read below 1 for my fg. At the very least, I can use it to see when fermentation is complete, regardless of what number it shows. I now regret not taking a separate hydrometer reading, but that is one of the reasons I bought the tilt… To save as much volume to imbibe as possible.

I do check my gravity regardless with my refractometer just before I pitch yeast… Now this little gizmo has all kinds of “stuff” that you can tinker with… So I do correlate my actual and what it reads on my phone… It’s very tricky for a non digital dinosaur… Sneezles61

Yea lesson learned. I will take a final gravity (once the tilt settles on whatever number my final will be) with my old fashioned hydrometer and compare. I just can’t imagine a world where my OG was so far off, and it fermented over 40 points in a little less than 3 days. I will just watch and compare, that’s all I can do. At least I feel better about my low efficiency, since it appears that’s not the case

Properly calibrated, my Tilt is consistently accurate vs. a standard hydrometer within 0.002. Close enough for me. But I spent quite a lot of time calibrating mine, have 3 or 4 cal points on it at various gravities.

Whoa Sir Dave!! I remember Damien’s post of testing/verifying our testing equipment… I think now is a great time to recalibrate/check equipment…
Distilled water or RO?
Time for digging out and dusting off info that is relevant… And “dabble” checking…
Would you explain/describe your process? Thank you Dave! Sneezles61

Well… since you asked… the LONG answer…

I calibrate my Tilt in tap water (city water). I suppose you can use distilled or RO water if you want to be super anal about it, but I think there’s far more important considerations to be concerned with.

I had to zero (1.000) my Tilt like a dozen times before it really stabilized for good. I discovered this was because I used tap water which is aerated on the faucet itself, so there were tiny air bubbles that kept coming out of solution and clung to the Tilt and messed up the readings. So I found that after the water sat out for several hours, I could shake the tiny bubbles off and they did NOT come back anymore.

Also I tried very hard to get the Tilt away from the sides of the container of water, made sure it didn’t touch anything. I’m concerned that if it touches the sides, water tension will mess up the readings. It takes a lot of work to keep the Tilt centered and away from the sides. Had to do that over and over. I’m honestly not sure if touching the sides is a bad thing, but I take no chances.

So ultimately, I know I got 1.000 at that calibration point.

Then meanwhile, you also need to do the same with a standard hydrometer so that you can zero that too and use it for all further comparisons. My old hydrometer always reads about 1.002 in plain water, so I know it’s a little high and always have to subtract off 0.002. Very very important. If you don’t calibrate your standard hydrometer, all your other Tilt calibrations are going to be screwed up.

On brew day, after you brew and you take your OG measurements, you need to use both the Tilt and the standard hydrometer together, then enter that into the Tilt software as another cal point. You could also do the same for pre-boil gravity, that would be another good cal point. Just be sure the temperatures are always 60-70 F (15-20 C). Temperature has a very significant effect on gravity measurements.

And then finally, when it comes time for FG measurements, you need to be aware IF there’s some protein and hop matter stuck to your Tilt, it will definitely mess up the reading. The trick I’ve found here is that both during and after fermentation, if I shake the fermenter vigorously for a few seconds once or twice per day, it will keep the Tilt relatively clean so that it reads more accurately. People who don’t do this will find their FG readings are way off compared to a standard hydrometer, but by removing most of the protein & hops you can still get it accurate within 0.001-0.002.

One thing I’m still not certain about is whether or how the Tilt compensates for temperature fluctuations. I get the feeling that it does seem important to get an accurate temperature on the Tilt in addition to the specific gravity so that it will maintain accurate SG at different temperatures. So I calibrate for temperature in much the same way as for SG, using multiple thermometers and take the average to try to get as accurate as I can. On the other hand, the Tilt is only good to 1.0 degree so don’t fret if the Tilt says 68.4 F but your other thermometer says 68.9 F or whatever – that’s as close as you’re going to get, and in fact it’s very normal for the Tilt to then jump back and forth between 68.4, 67.4, 69.4, up and down by a degree or two from minute to minute because it is incapable of reading any decimal places in between, it can only jump a whole 1.0 if it think it senses a little change and feels the need to make a leap up or down. Yeah… temperature measurement with the Tilt is a little misleading, best you can really do is take an average of like a dozen readings over a few hours because at any given moment it might be off by a whole degree or more. Well, same can be said for SG I suppose as well.

Regarding thermometers, I calibrate my favorite thermometer in both ice water and boiling water CORRECTED FOR MY ELEVATION ABOVE SEA LEVEL (MIGHT NOT BE 212 F (100 C)!). I know my mash thermometer reads a little low at one point and a little high at the opposite point (I can’t remember which), such that I know it reads fairly accurately in between within a degree. BUT, if you’ve never done this with your thermometer(s), then you really don’t know how accurate it is then, do you!?

Yeah… the Tilt is a fun (but expensive!) little toy, and you can get really accurate results with it, IF you calibrate ALL your instruments with utmost care on your first batch or two. After that, it should work for subsequent batches… until you need to change the batteries! So far I’ve used mine 3 times I think and it’s still alive on original batteries. Crossing fingers for next time.

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Wow that intense. I dropped mine in water, I kept moving it away from the edge of the container, but it always kept finding its way back to the edges. But I got it to see water as 0.997, but the reaction in the beer is unreal. Started as 1.05 when I expected 1.065, then hitting near 1 even after less than 3 days. It’s been up and down but steady between 1.003 and 1.006 since, but I’m gonna let it sit for some extra time just to be safe. I know it could always be my error, but I feel like there’s no way I messed up my brew this badly.

I’m going to wait another week or so, take an old fashioned hydrometer reading. If it’s close to 1, I’ll leave it alone. If it’s really been stuck at like 1.02, I’ll compensate to get it going again (either more yeast or more fermentables). Worst case is I brew it all over again

One thing I found about mine… DO NOT LET IT SOAK IN PBW. It will crack the housing.

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How’d you unscrew the cap? Mines on so tight, even with those rubber jar lid opener gizmos it won’t budge!
Thank you Dave for your insight… It’s good to see some other ways to approach calibrating the equipment we all come to rely on… And I agree, be as accurate as you can…
I do have a jug of distilled water just for this… Well, I do like to verify my refractometer… And dabble check my pH meter too… From time to time… Sneezles61

That is CRAZY. I wonder what happened chemically there?

I just found my Tilt giving off a false reading because it got stuck under the shoulder of my 5 gallon carboy

So here’s my question now:

Let’s assume that the hydrometer is reading 100% accurately… Is it normal to drop from 1.05 to 1.06 within 55 hours? Never had it happen that quickly before.

My real fear is that the fermentation is stuck. Little to no airlock activity, and I’m betting the hydrometer was messed up. If that is the case, I won’t know until I move into the secondary and I can take a sample for old fashioned hydrometer testing. Let’s say it’s really at 1.02 after 2 weeks. Is the secondary too late to pitch more yeast? And let’s say it’s super messed up, is is at all possible to add more yeast AND some DME at the secondary? I imagine it would be fine, I would just have to allow for a little extended time to allow for further fermentation. Never been down this road before, so I’m curious what everyone thinks.

All my ales drop from .06 to .05 or lower in 55 hours. That is normal i think.
My last brew 1.066 at 10/5 6:23 pm. 1.033 at 10/7 5:08am

Without seeing your recipe @GoBlue59 it’s hard to say. I just finished at 1.018 with too many unfermentables from low diastatic power grains at too high a mash and too much oats. I moved to the secondary with a cup of sugar added and pitched some “killer” wine yeast I had in the fridge. My thinking was that I wanted to thin out the beer and add some more CO2 to the secondary. My gravity jumped to 1.025, fermentation started again and now after 4 days I’m at 1.017… we’ll see where it finishes.

Thanks for the insight. I actually meant that it dropped from 1.05 to 1.006 in about 55 hours. That feels excessively fast and worrisome, that’s why I feel like the hydrometer was not working right.

I’m going to wait the “old fashioned” method of 2 weeks in a primary, transfer to a secondary and take a sample. If the sample is stuck at like 1.02 while the hydrometer is now reading 1.006, then I’m debating adding some extra fermentables and some more yeast. If the sample does actually read something in the right neighborhood, (like if the 1.006 is accurate somehow, even after that fast) then I may just leave it alone.

ok that’s fast. when you transfer look at how much yeast is sitting on the top of the tilt. Make note and when you put it in the secondary it should be the same but it won’t be. I have concerns that yeast pushing down on the tilt skews the data.