Hi Al,

Did my first run today. My question is; My Hydrometer sinks right to the bottom, it burns and doesn't taste bad, is nice and clear. I think I could power the space shuttle. So why does my hydrometer sink like the Titantic ? Any help would be appreciated. I used volume 1 receipe.

Thanks,
stockman063

I know that I am not Al but maybe I can offer and idea for you. I have two hydrometers, one for the mash (potential ABV) and one for proofing. The one for proofing goes to 200% while the one for potential only goes to 20%. Hope this helps.

Shiner

thanks shiner, I will have to check that out, and by the way...glad to hear from you

stockman063

The hydrometer you use to measure potential alcohol (i.e amount of sugar in the wash before fermenting) has a broad range from around 1.000 which is the specific gravity of water...to much higher possibly 1.500. This is because a wash before fermenting is much denser than water.

But a proofing hydrometer has a very narrow range, since the s.g of alcohol is very close to water. It has far less buoyancy than the other hydrometer. It doesn't take much to sink one - for example if you had suspended matter in your booze it could affect the reading. It's way too finicky for me and kind of gets outside of the simplicity I like to emphasize in my methods.

I only measure s.g of the wash. When I distill I know from experience roughly what the proof is and don't bother measuring it.