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How many people have had success with the Finished Beer Refractometer tool?

agusus

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Sep 28, 2009
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If you haven't used the refractometer tool in BeerSmith, this question isn't for you.
I'm wondering how accurate the Finished Beer calculator is.  I think it's amazing that we could potentially figure out the OG and ABV of a commercial beer just by taking a hydro and refract measurement of it.  Since I don't know the equations behind the tool, I'm not sure though if this is more of a guesstimate (ie, it guesses the ABV within +/- 3% ABV error) or an accurate measurement (ie, ABV within 0.5 or 1.0 of actual)?

I've tried it on one beer, a 10% ABV IIPA, and the result came way off. The Finished Beer tool estimated like a 7% ABV.

I tried to degas the beer sample as much as possible before taking the hydro / refract samples, and I warmed it to room temp.  But it's possible my hydro measurement was off, since I've never had super accurate consistent results with my hydro anyway.  So I'm just wondering have other people had success with this technique?  Say take 5 commercial beers from your fridge and run them through the tool to see if you got accurate OG and ABV?
 
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