Leaving the hydrometer in the carboy?

[UDV]

This is going to sound like an insanely dumb question--humor me.

When I was in the process of buying all the random assortment of junk I needed to brew, I ended up having three hydrometers. In my most recent test batch, I just left the hydrometer floating in the must directly after being sanitized. I was able to check as it goes down and it seems to work.

Barring the situation where the carboy is dropped is there anything really wrong with doing this? Like, will the alcohol in an old batch do something crazy to the glass? For me the convenience of being able to spot check the mead with a flashlight helps me doing daily readings. For the price of $7.00 and leaving it in there seems to offset the cost in having to sanitize the wine thief and test it weekly as well as draining my supply.

Any thoughts positive or negative? Is there some equivalent technology that commercial makers use to test this on the fly? The batch that it's in is my troublesome #5, and it's slowly going down a tiny bit every week and at I don't even worry now, as long as it's moving, it seems to satisfy my need to 'muck with the mead'

 

[Medsen Fey]

You can certainly do this without problem. They do make some small hydrometers that work well for this. There is a post discussing them Here.

 

[liff]

I agree with Medsen. I have 5 of those five inch hydrometers, and I can say that all 5 are inaccurate and harder to read. Also, it is a good way of monitoring the change in gravity as opposed to the most accurate gravity reading.

They are harder to read for me because the increments are in 0.05 values. So the difference between 1.008 and 1.013 is hard to visualize, especially through the carboy's glass distortion.

However, for the price, they are pretty cool.

Liff

 

[JamesP]

Check this for an alternative.

You just have to weigh the carboy to get the SG. Use it in conjunction with taking SG readings.

 

[lastbornjoker]

i to so this but one thing i notice is when its fermenting tiny bubbles will stick to the hydro. I think this might give u an inacurate reading. not much but just a little

 

[UDV]

i to so this but one thing i notice is when its fermenting tiny bubbles will stick to the hydro. I think this might give u an inacurate reading. not much but just a little

What I did when this happened was jiggle the carboy a little bit and use a bright flashlight and a magnifying glass. Dumb, I know. I don't have any carboys with hydrometers in them now, as everything is sort of done fermenting now.