Came across this, and thought it was pretty cool.
Don’t know anything about its accuracy and reliability, but the price point is very reasonable. If it proves to be an accurate, reliable product I’d jump on it. I ferment in buckets and hate having to crack the lid to check gravity every time. For example, I ballpark when to ramp on lagers and it works well but it’d be nice to hit 60% attenuation spot on and then ramp. And I just like the idea of verifying FG on big beers or strains that super attenuate (like saison strains) without repeated opening. Thanks for posting.
Just purchased. I’ll report back. Ships in 3 weeks so it will be a while.
Birthday money was burning a hole in my wallet.
Awesome. Can’t wait to see what you think!
Sound too good to be true, but I’m hopeful.
Dang, really?! If I’d known they would sell at that price I would have started making these a couple years ago.
Are you around next weekend, by the way? I’ll be in town for a wedding.
At $120 it’s cheaper than the Beer Bug. I’ve had a Brew Bug for a few months. I do like it for controlling temp ramping, etc, but have found that it’s more valuable as a relative “progress meter” and less valuable for actual gravity readings.
The big issue for me is that it seems to be calibrated at a specific temperature, but then as I change my fermentation temp it throws off the gravity reading. Its internal thermometer and temp probe are supposed to help correct for this, so I need to study a little more, check for firmware updates, etc. in the meantime, it tells me what I need to know.
I’ll be interested in hearing about your experiences with the Brewometer.
I was comparing to the price of the Beer Bug, but it definitely isn’t cheap. I recommend you sell one at ~ $80 ;D
Yep, I’m here next weekend - let me know.
Good info. I can see how changing temps could throw off the gravity readings. Hopefully some of the bugs get worked out with that. For me, I would see it more as a ‘progress meter’, too.
I used it on my last batch and both the temp and the gravity were spot on. I’ll be using it in today’s batch as well.
Which, BeerBug or Brewometer? I’ve had some sucessful batches with the BeerBug too, it just seems that my temp ramping/crashing plays havoc with the calibration to the point that I have several periods where the gravity appears to increase by up to 5 points. They say this can be caused by CO2 bubbles getting stuck on the torpedo. I’m not sure if that’s my issue or not…
Brewometer, I don’t think the BeerBug works on a my fermenter. I didn’t do to much temp ramping (2 degrees). Today it was close again, I measure 1.051 and the brewometer was 1.052
I decided not to purchase. It turns out to record gravity and temperature trends you need to place and leave a Bluetooth enabled device (smartphone, tablet) in range of the Brewometer. I don’t have a spare device to leave next to my fermenter.
So the device itself doesn’t record? It basically a digital hydrometer/thermometer combo?
Right. It sounds like it gives a measurement every 10 seconds but a client is needed to record the measurements.
Indeed. That can be a difference maker, however, I like the direction they went with placing the data in your control.
I contributed to the Brewmometor kickstarter, and when that did not make its goal, I bought a BeerBug. I am glad to see the concept is still moving forward and nearing fruition.
I like my beer bug, and think it works pretty darn well. I like the abilty to track my brews remotely on my phone while I am at work, but in some cases, I am uneasy about the the ability of the device to continue to function if the company decides to go a different direction. (i.e. the beer bug company needs to be around to give you access to your data)
The Brewmometor, while requireing a device to be in range, is kind of a big thing in my book, because it gives you the data in YOUR CLOUD. I feel better about being in control of the data, and having in a google spreadsheet… that means I can manipulate the data and possibly add it to my brew logs on my own. The extra step of finding a spare tablet or old phone… or even picking up a base model Kindle Fire… not too bad a compromise to get the data in my own control! (I would really like it if they had a PC based app, since I have a computer close by my brewery already)
That being said… I like the Brewbug features and logging it provides, and their support in asnwering questions has been wonderful. What they do to make the data points available and the methods they display them (graphs, choose the resolution and how many points…) are spot on for what I would do with a more “open source” data logger (like the brewmometor).
I would love to hear futher feedback/updates on the Brewmometor from users!
Have one. Used it for two batches now. Second one is in the mail. Just set my old iphone as a dedicated receiver for the data stream to the cloud. Works like a charm.
The straight part of the blue line was my iphone that ran out of juice, the cable came loose. Anywho, just restarted it and it went along on its merry way…
Could one of you post a pic of it in the fermenter? Does it need to be recalibrated every time like the Beer Bug? I have the Beer Bug… I bought it when it was a kickstarter… Wanted it for my meads but found taking it out every time I needed to degas and having to recalibrate it each time made it useless to me… It’s literally just collecting dust for me.
I calibrated it once for my first batch with distilled water. For the second batch, when I threw it in the distilled water, I matched temp and gravity. You don’t have to take it out of the fermenter to calibrate.