That’s pretty good customer service. Certainly not going to get that from a DIY kit.
I’ve pretty well talked myself into getting a TILT as soon as I can fit it in our hobby budget.
I agree with all who say it is not a necessity. I received mine from my daughter last Christmas. I love it! Drop in fermentor, monitor the progress, both SG and temp, and never take another hydrometer sample. After initial calibration, it is real accurate.
I brew more lagers than ales. The TILT comes in handy, letting me know when fermentation has slowed/stopped. What’s equally important, is the customer service. If I had to do it all over again, I would still buy the TILT.
I bought one, and the answer is yes. Totally worth it.
No, they are a waste of money. Save up and get an EasyDens instead. Something that actually works as advertised.
I like my Tilts and no sampling is needed, but I am not using mine for absolute accuracy. Close enough for homebrew is close enough for me. But, there is a big sale on the Easy Dens at More Beer, making it reasonably a bit cheaper:
I use them for the whole process. They end where my calculations end, so I’ve stopped verifying. Perfect system, probably not but after initial calibration they have been spot on for me.
Three times the price and requires extracting a sample… Versus not even having be in the same building to pull a reading. I remain unconvinced by your argument.
I have my Tilt log to Google Sheets. It is pretty cool seeing how things are going while away from home.
And you can look like your busily working away at the office😇
The Tilt is expensive enough, I don’t need something even more expensive. I ain’t going pro anytime in this lifetime. Let some other suckers do that. Let brewing be fun.
I can kind of see the value of it (the easydens). If you’re going to buy a refractometer to check your gravity while you brew ($60), and get two tilt hydrometers ($140*2, $340 total with refractometer) then paying $400 to be able to accurately measure gravity and abv isn’t too bad. You can’t do it remotely, but if you only need a 2 mL sample you can do it twice a day without crying over lost beer. Personally I don’t mind sizing up my batch a few ounces to take a gravity reading though.
Checking gravity twice a day! Geez. I guess I’m a lazy set it and forget it. I mean, I track it often now that I have tilts, but I just pitched, and didn’t come back for a couple weeks in the pre-tilt times. I would just be annoyed with the sanitation aspect.
I’m just saying you could do that theoretically. I check gravity once or twice with a hydrometer, I’ve got a pretty good feel for the strains I use.
I will admit that fault of the Tilt – it wouldn’t scale well.
The EasyDens would def. make more sense if I needed to track several fermenters at once. I don’t see myself routinely having more than maybe 2 batches going at once.
How about one gives you an accurate reading every time and the other… sometimes, maybe.
Different strokes, different goals. Even on even pricing, I like the decision I’ve made and wouldn’t change it. You’ve made yours and you also would not change that. Let’s just have fun sharing our hobby [emoji482]
That’s true. If accuracy is required the Tilt is not the toy for the job.
The Tilt gives an indication of when activity starts, progress of that activity trend, and when activity is finished. It doesn’t provide an accurate SG at any point IMO.
+1
Some folks enjoy driving a beat up 12 yr old Ford truck (me) while others require the latest, fastest, shiniest Corvette on the road. Both get you from point A to B.
Some folks need to have a home brewery that would rival some small commercial operations. They are beautiful to look at. …but some folks make great beer in a cooler and plastic bucket. Nothing to see but a good pint.
It’s just a matter of disposable resources and personal desire. After all, it’s just beer.
I found that after I calibrated the Tilt with at least 3 different gravities (or was it 4?), it became accurate vs. a regular hydrometer within about 0.002, which to me is good enough. During fermentation especially during and after high krausen, I rock the fermenter to shake off much of the schmutz as well. Since I have glass fermenters I can see when this occurs. Otherwise yes the readings will be way off if you allow the schmutz to stick and dry on there. But just a good rock twice a day for a few days will keep most of it from clinging.
After fallowing a rabbit hole of tilt and iSpinle I just bought EasyDens meter.
I do not have it yet but to my understanding it does not measure beer ABV.
There is supposed to be new version by the next year. You can already pre order it.