I am a newbie at brewing and only have 2 complete batches under my belt. Both turned out good but I noticed I am wasting a lot or wort and beer taking gravity readings. To fill the tube on both ends I am losing about of 2 bottles. For my third batch I sanitized my hydrometer and floated it right in the fermentation bucket prior to adding the yeast. But looking down at the angle I am sure it messed up my reading, not to mention my eyes are going, but I got low reading 1.044. I tried to mix really well but hard to say how good of a job I did. The short question is there cheap alternatives, minus the refractometer, to get gravity readings?