First time brewing OG measuerments

[dmcman73]

Hi everyone. This Friday I brewed my very first batch of beer, I used an Extract recipe kit from Midwest Supplies called "Hank's Hefeweizen" and it is currently fermenting away nicely in my pail.

I have a question, I used both a Hydrometer and a Refractometer to do my OG measurement prior to adding the yeast into the fermenting bucket. The Hydrometer measured 1.052 (exactly what the kit stated it would be around) and my Refractometer measured 12Brix. I used a number of calculators floating around that converted Brix and it came out to be around 1.046. In fact, the Refractometer I have is actually a dual measurement and it had 1.045 next to the 12 brix. I noticed that out of all the calculators out there they all have a Wort correction factor that can be changed and the default on all of them is 1.04. One of the calculators I used is called Brewzor on my Android device. I was able to plug in the OG of the hydrometer and the Original Brix number and it automatically calculated the correction factor (.9330) to match 12brix to 1.052.

Here is my question, can I keep measuring with my refractometer and using that new wort correction factor? Is it normal to adjust the Wort correction factor?

I've seen a lot of posts regarding Hydrometer VS reftactor posts and in fact that's where I found most of the calculators but none mentioned (at least not the ones I found) adjusting the Wort Correction factor.

Thanks.

 

[nilo]

Couple things that could affect your readings:
1)Temperature of the sample. A correctiong needs to be applied when using a hydrometer
2)You can miss few points when eye bolling a hydrometer reading
3)Your hydrometer may not be calibrated, check in distilled water, it should read 1.000, Compare to another hydrometer
4)Your refractometer was not properly zeroed with distilled water before reading your sample
5)Sample may be producing a blurry transition in the refractometer so you may have missed few point when eye bolling the reading.
5)Your hydrometer is not properly calibrated. Compare with another refractometer. Some may need a tem correction depending on the temp of your sample.

When I plug 12brix into my calculator, I get 1.048. Your hydrometer reading was 1.052, 4 points away. I don't find hard to believe that just the "guessing" involved in reading these two tools could drive the difference.
I would test the hydrometer with distilled water and perhaps borrow someone's else tools to compare.
I also had these same discrepancies issues, until I moved to a digital refractometer. No guessing anymore.

 

[dmcman73]

Hi Nilo,

I used distilled water to calibrate the refractometer to 1.000 prior to taking a measurement of the worth. I had not checked the Hydrometer with distilled water though (a noob oversight I guess) but i checked it this morning and the reading was 1.002 (I am assuming that each graduated mark on the hydro is .002 so it was on the first line right after the 1.000 mark). If that's correct then my reading was actually 1.050 which brings the refractometer reading of 1.048 more in line (about .002 off rather than .004 off). So being 2 points off is acceptable?

I've been looking at a digital refractometer, which do you use?

 

[nilo]

2 point is good enough for me.
I use this refractometer for maybe a year now.

 

[dmcman73]

Thanks Nilo!