0.1mg accuracy? No wonder you don't get on with pyknometers! Try a 100ml bottle and you might get away with it, but then some of the benefits of the bottles (small samples) is lost. More important than accuracy is repeatability which is why those cheap Chinese postage stamp "jewellery" scales are useless. The scales I use aren't perfect (dirt cheap at £35-40), they use electronic tricks to stabilise the reading, but repeatable within 0.03g (things might have got better than 0.1g if you haven't looked very recently) so work okay with 25ml bottles, might work better with 50ml. All over the place for 10ml bottles.Carnot wrote: ↑Sat Jun 12, 2021 10:28 pmWallybrew,
You are 100% spot on. You are the exception not the rule and you have a 0.1 mg scale, and I guess a whole host of other analytical kit incuding atomic adsorption. Not exactly a home brewers inventory. I have 25 ml and 50 my pycnometers. My weakness is the scales. 0.1 mg accuracy gets to be a little expensive in more ways than one.
A decent hydrometer calibrated for alcohol is a whole lot easier than a pycnometer. Not perfect I grant you but realtively easy to use.
A decent hydrometer a whole lot easier? Huge samples to make them work. Meniscus to allow for (consistently!) - somewhat subjectively. Difficult to read if your eyes aren't great. Get glasses? Do they make glasses for "Saccadic Intrusions" (the answer is "no"). You have no idea how truly crap a hydrometer is until forced into a position that makes it obvious.
A pyknometer isn't calibrated for alcohol, but it will tell you the relative density of alcohol (<0.800).