Milwaukee MA871 digital refractometer

I just picked up a MA871.  Anybody here use one?  Got any tips?

Congratulations to your new purchase.

I do not mean to rain on your parade. To my opinion EasyDens is much better option. I understand it is three times as much but still better option. I use it almost every day.

I owned this exact one for a while at the brewery. IIRC I dropped it and it broke. Ended up getting the Hanna. Regardless they are the exact same interface.

For best results take a sample with a pipette and let it cool for a bit before taking the reading. The sample is always off when you first put it on and it is hot in spite of the “ATC”.

If I was a commercial brewer, thats what I would have gotten.  For my purposes it just isnt worth the cost.

Thanks for the tip, Keith!

I understand.

I worked for a fairly large regional brewery for about 4 months last year – 30 bbl, 3 vessel, internal colandria brewhouse. Pretty fun to run. But they use a sh!tty handheld refractometer for all hot side readings. I’m farsighted - can’t see anything 3 feet in front of my face and struggled with the eyepiece on the hydrometer in the dark brewery. I begged them for just a digital refractometer but … no. I would have been head over heals with an EasyDens.

It is a great tool. I would not talk about it if it was not.

Before getting EasyDens I was using Plato hydrometer with temp adjustment scale. I wanted to get something different because reading hydrometer is not that accurate (even thou I was using finer scale hydrometers)

Tilt is not really an option for 15BBL fermenters.

I was considering Hanna Plato refracto meter but was not too exited about it. Then someone here mentioned EasyDens and that was it.

I have the Tilt and it’s great but I don’t trust it for accuracy. The best thing about that is the temperature and knowing when the fermentation is done.

[emoji106]

I use it to monitor progress, get temp, and determine completion then get my final gravity from an FG hydrometer. (2.5 and 5 gal. batches)

This is my experience, too.  I like the realtime relative data from the TILT, but I take separate OG and FG measurements for computing ABV.