Collection: Brewing Hydrometers & Measurement Tools

A traditional hydrometer requires you to draw a sample and read it manually each time, while a smart hydrometer like the Tilt floats in your fermenter and sends gravity and temperature readings to an app continuously. The Tilt saves you from opening the fermenter repeatedly, reducing contamination risk.

The colours let you run multiple fermenters at once and track each one separately in the companion app, rather than indicating any functional difference between units. Choose based on how many batches you want to monitor simultaneously.

A hydrometer measures gravity by floating in a liquid sample, while a refractometer measures gravity from a single drop of liquid using light refraction, needing a much smaller sample. Refractometers are handy for quick pre-boil checks, though a correction is needed for accurate readings once fermentation has started.

You only need one to get started, but owning both is the ideal setup for most homebrewers. A refractometer is used on brew day for fast, tiny-sample checks of your hot mash and boil. A hydrometer can be used during the mash and boil, but you need to wait for the sample to cool first, so it's more often used at the end of fermentation to get an accurate final gravity reading before bottling.

A wortometer measures wort gravity in-line during the brewing process itself, giving you a real-time reading before the wort even reaches the fermenter. It's most useful for brewers wanting to check pre-boil or pre-fermentation gravity without pulling a separate sample.