Hey everyone, new to this forum and thought I'd post here to get some opinions on a problem I ran into recently.
I brewed the other day and broke my hydrometer right before I took my OG. Luckily, I always keep a spare, so it was no problem, took the reading and entered it into beersmith. This is where I ran into trouble, I had an efficiency drop of 10%, I consistently get 85% and today I was at 75%. I quickly came to the conclusion that since my hydrometer was the only factor that changed, it had to be the culprit. I found an article on BYO about performing a 2 point calibration, so I set it up and found that my new hydrometer was reading about 1 point low in DI water and about 4 points low in a 1.080 solution. I was blown away by how far off it was! Also, with my 4 point correction, my efficiency was bumped up to 80% for this brew day. So now I am left wondering how far off my old hydrometer was?!
Anyone else ever perform a 2 point calibration? And are you even concerned that your hydrometer readings could be potentially misleading?
Cheers