Hydrometer iSpindel - Hydrometer and Thermometer Brew Beer, Wine Making, Spirits

I wasn’t sure whether to get one of these as I’m not that techy but I’m so glad I did! I love it! It is really well made, smart looking and works great - it’s brilliant to be able to monitor my brew on my phone even when I’m at work (yes I’m that sad :D) but the support I got from Stuart when asking dumb questions about setting it up was second to none! Thank you! If I can do it anyone can! Now what colour should I get next!!?

I don't review often, but I felt it was worth letting other brewers know how well this works.I've been using for about 3 weeks - onto my second brew. While setup is a little tedious, even basic computer know how will get you through the process in about 10 minutes. The WiFi signal from the submerged device isn't great and I had to relocate a signal booster to get it working. But it's been working like a charm since. It provides reasonably accurate temperature and gavity readings and a nice little graph to track progress. From this I can see that my brew cupboard is working well, keeping brews within 1c tolerance and can identify when fermentation had stopped as the gravity reading flatens. Much handier than watching an airlock for 5 minutes or taking daily samples.I am so impressed with how well it works and how good value this device is when compared to competitors. I'll be buying a second ispindel in the next few months to pop into fermenter no 2.

Great bit of brewing kit for the money. Definitely needs calibration as it was way off out of the box. Calibration was a little tricky initially but you soon get the hang of it.Update after a couple of brews - I've had a couple of problems with the iSpindel but the seller was very helpful in dealing with these.

I’ve been brewing beer for 30+years and this is probably the most useful tool now in my kit. I’ve used it 3 times now and it’s brilliant!! It opens a window into your beer’s fermentation process it will show you when the fermentation is stalling due to it being too cold or the opposite when it goes into thermal runaway. I have seen a few points made about calibration, but I’ve not experienced any but even if it was reading off it’s the difference between OG and FH that are critical and being able to see that the fermentation is complete. Absolutely no issues with flocculation interfering with tilt and reading. Wish I’d bought one sooner.

Got this as an alternative to the expensive and eternally out-of-stock Tilt devices. Given the price was not expecting much but... it's fantastic!I chose to code my own raspberry pi interface (it can post JSON HTTP), but for those that want an off-the-shelf solution it works out of the box with the free online Ubidots service and is surprisingly easy to set up.It measures liquid gravity by the tilt angle it floats at. This can be converted to plato or specific gravity. It also reports on temperature and battery voltage.You can choose to calibrate yourself or accept the suggested calibration formula, but I found the suggested value was way off (the only negative). This would be fine for monitoring when fermentation is complete, but I chose to recalibrate, which was easy with a large jug, manual hydrometer or refractometer, and about a kilo of sugar. Once I'd found the new calibration formula found it's now able to give a really accurate reading which after temperature adjustment matches a refractometer exactly (to the 1000ths). This means I can see live what ABV I'm hitting (and with a bit of maths, predict what the final ABV will be based on the graph curve).

First time I used the Ispindel the temperature was great, however the gravity didn't work. I reset the Ispindel and set this up again for the next brew and again the temperature worked and the gravity didn't work.

Set up instructions were clear. The optional calibration takes a bit of effort but I think it's worth it for the accuracy benefit.It took me a few goes to get the Ubidots dashboard to report what I wanted and even on my phone I find the browser interface better than the app.Managed to watch the fermentation effects from another country during my mead's first week.It takes a bit of effort but once you've got it set up it's much easier and cleaner than taking hydrometer readings regularly.

Set up is awful, ubidots is a pain. Hate it.