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Thermometer

Slobrew

Master Brewer
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Mar 2, 2014
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Location
Beverly Hills, Florida
Are any of you guys thrilled with the thermometers in your brew or mash pots. I'm using SS 8 gallon pots for both mash/brew  and I just don't trust my thermometers. I've already changed out the one that came with the mash pot and the new one is better but certainly not good enough.

I think they are mounted too low on the pot and are picking up excessive heat from my gas burner. BUT that is what the pots were made to do so I would have expected the thermometers to meet the task. I don't center my pot over the burner any more but put it off center so the thermometers are a little further from the heat, but I still get erratic readings.

 
I have three of these and wouldn't use anything else.

http://blichmannengineering.com/products/brewmometer
 
http://thermoworks.com/products/low_cost/rt600c.html

My fave.
 
I have seen thermapen before, but for some reason thought it was a lot more expensive, maybe confused with a different one.  The IP65 rating is a plus.  Just had to replace my refractometer, pretty sure the old one failed cause it wasn't rated. 
 
The mash temperature is critical so I use a good quality digital food thermometer I bought in a cook shop. I don't bother with a thermometer in the boiler. As long as I can see a good rolling boil I'm happy.
 
KernelCrush said:
I have seen thermapen before, but for some reason thought it was a lot more expensive, maybe confused with a different one.  The IP65 rating is a plus.  Just had to replace my refractometer, pretty sure the old one failed cause it wasn't rated.

Yes, they are very proud of the actual Thermopen, usually $80-plus bucks.  I followed some link to that and shopped around on Accuracy and speed, and price, and this RT600C was on sale, so I talked some friends into making up five for the discount.  I tested all five before passing them out, and they were all the same in ice and in 155F water, and both my $10 Target/Walmart models were off from the five better ones. 
 
I see now, Thermoworks makes the thermapen, and others like your RT600C.  I'll go that way when I break my CDN, and I will.  Thanks for pointing it out.

 
I am reminded of the old saying, "A man with a watch always knows what time it is, a man with two watches is never sure." I think it may be the same with thermometers.
 
I use a digital and an analog during the mash/sparge.  Good thing because I just found out the other week that the digital was way off and ended up pitching my yeast at a very high temp (I opted not to use the analog at the time).  I had to re-pitch.  The batch is still going but hopefully it'll come out.  I will be re-calibrating in the next few days.
 
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