Refractometer issues, off scale readings

[LegTaste]

Decided to get back into brewing after a good while, got an alt on the go, near the end of the boil.

Anyway i bought myself a refractometer, it is for salinity but has a SG scale of up to 1.070, i've made sugar solutions to test calibration and all seems to be in order, but when i measure the yet to be beer liquid, it goes off the scale, and its just not possible to have it that high even if i had 100% efficiency.

I have no hydrometer to compare, i thought I'd get one of these to save breaking the hydrometers all the time and wasting so much liquid.

Any ideas?

[FuzzySteve]

Did you get it from eBay? I bought one off there for similar reasons but it turned out to be a bit of a chocolate fire guard if I'm honest.

Buy cheap, buy twice! I should have learned by now.

[LegTaste]

Just seems a bit odd, that with sugar it works perfectly, well near enough.

Cheap doesn't always mean bad, I've got an £8 pH meter from china, more precise and accurate than universal indicator paper will be.

Looks like i'm just going to have to see if can get hold of one of my friends and borrow a hydrometer, not hopeful though.

[Andy]

You need a refractometer calibrated for sucrose not salinity.

[LegTaste]

i've measured it with sugar in water and it was just about right, i created 2 solutions expected to be 1.050 and 1.060, and they hit the right place near enough on the scale

[Andy]

How much salt did you add ?

[Andy]

And found this

http://discussions.probrewer.com/showth ... r-solution

[LegTaste]

Decided to just weigh my wort, looks to be about 1.050g per ml, if only it occurred to me to use a scale i wouldn't have bothered with buying this piece of rubbish.

Thanks for all the replies.