After much deliberation I took the plunge on buying a Tilt Hydrometer, its not a cheap piece of Homebrew Tech by any means. It came to £144 pounds from Malt Miller, pretty good as it was the updated v2 of the Tilt which usually goes for nearer/over £160.
The Tilt V2 has some improvements over it's predecessor:
Range: Better reception and range. With the increased transmission power your Tilt will send data through larger, thicker-walled fermenters.
Precision: Upgraded sensors. With an improved temperature sensor and accelerometer your Tilt will operate with more precision.
Efficiency: We’ve reduced power consumption so more brews, less battery. New Look: Newly designed custom circuit board and harness.
There are two ways to keep track of your brew, One which the google sheet is hosted for you, which you get access to, or you can host your own cloud app and store the brew sheets yourself. I wanted to do the later so I can keep hold of the sheets and felt bit more in control knowing its all hosted in my own 'google space' I followed these instructions on how to do it.
see also written instructions/links to sheets template
I did a few 'test brews' basically just putting the tilt in water to get use to the cloud logging/tilt setup and I just had remember to email the cloud url to myself and copy the link into the tilt app.
Another thing to note is that if you want a constant stream of data throughout the day, you will need to have a bluetooth device in range of the tilt. Fortunately I found an old iphone (probably the wife's!) that I keep plugged in next to the fermenter in the garage. You will also need to stop the phone/device from going into sleep mode or switching off.
Initial Impressions
It is a great piece of equipment. Having that data and seeing the trend in fermentation opened, has helped stop obsessing over & wondering what the brew was doing. It's allowed me to gain extra control over the fermentation process - avoiding stalls and knowing when fermentation is done without taking numerous samples to find out.
How the new Tilt V2 holds up in a heavy dry hopped brew, that is something I have to find out. The V1 Tilt apparently wasn't very accurate when using lots of dry hops as they were effecting the sensors. The battery was another well documented flaw of the V1 with a lot of users expressing frustration with the Tilt V1 cutting out mid fermentation after just using the Tilt for 1 previous brews before hand. Make sure you keep the Tilt upright when not in use as that will conserve power (puts the Tilt in sleep mode).
The Tilt V2 has some improvements over it's predecessor:
Range: Better reception and range. With the increased transmission power your Tilt will send data through larger, thicker-walled fermenters.
Precision: Upgraded sensors. With an improved temperature sensor and accelerometer your Tilt will operate with more precision.
Efficiency: We’ve reduced power consumption so more brews, less battery. New Look: Newly designed custom circuit board and harness.
There are two ways to keep track of your brew, One which the google sheet is hosted for you, which you get access to, or you can host your own cloud app and store the brew sheets yourself. I wanted to do the later so I can keep hold of the sheets and felt bit more in control knowing its all hosted in my own 'google space' I followed these instructions on how to do it.
see also written instructions/links to sheets template
I did a few 'test brews' basically just putting the tilt in water to get use to the cloud logging/tilt setup and I just had remember to email the cloud url to myself and copy the link into the tilt app.
Another thing to note is that if you want a constant stream of data throughout the day, you will need to have a bluetooth device in range of the tilt. Fortunately I found an old iphone (probably the wife's!) that I keep plugged in next to the fermenter in the garage. You will also need to stop the phone/device from going into sleep mode or switching off.
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| iphone sits on top of cool brewing bag (housing fermentor) |
The Tilt does not control fermentation, nor will it make a better brew. I still have an inkbird (probe goes into my SS brewtech termowell) to control fermenation temperatures.
I currently have my Saison Of Love in the fermentor with the yeast being pitched on 27th August.
I could track easily when fermentation kicked off and the rate it was going, allowing me to increase the heat source in my brewing bag to maintain the temperature to slightly higher than room temperature (26c). It now appears (5 days later) that the fermentation has slowed, even though my OG was 4 points lower than my estimated OG of 1.052 the belle Saison yeast has been a monster and eaten 93.75% of the sugars. Apparent Attenuation is another bit of info the tilt allows you to track, so even though I was looking at on estimate a 5.5% saison, I am now looking at something in the region of 5.9%.
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| Screenshot of the Tilt Report Sheet |
I have noticed however, that the during active fermentation the sheet did record some fluctuations of gravity readings, sometimes only 1 points sometimes it jumped up to 3 points. You could however see a trend in activity so these blips can be ignored as it could record 2 'blips' say over several hours. so nothing to really worry about, I could see the trend visually using the chart sheet.
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| screenshot of the Tilt Chart sheet |
Both of these I will have to wait and see if the Tilt V2 has overcome, but my initial use of the Tilt V2 is that it could be a welcomed gadget in my home brewing arsenal.
