Brix Refractometer with ATC - Tiaoyeer Digital Handheld Refractometer for Beer Wine Brewing, Dual Scale-Specific Gravity 1.000-1.130 and Brix 0-32%

╔ ■ Price Point / Value: 5/5 ╠ ■ Quality: 5/5 ╠ ■ Recommendation: 5/5 ╠ ☼ Overall: 5/5 ╠ ►Product Need: Beer/wine making ╠ ►Product Pros: Calibration, accurate, easy to use, case ╠ ►Considerations: ╠ ►My Review: This is a nice tool to assist with me making beer. It’s easy to read and easy to use. It is pretty big, but doesn’t use a lot of liquid to get a reading and doesn’t need any power to support it which means it is less prone to breaking. I would say it is accurate as far as I can tell and does everything I need from. It also comes in a nice case. Overall happy with my purchase.

If you have a slushy machine and you intend to serve house made frozen cocktails you NEED this. Don’t buy the cookie cutter premade frozen drink mixes. Make your own from scratch. They taste like far better and a far cheaper to make. Takes some of the guesswork out of cocktail creation and allows more creativity. If your Brix is between 13-15 you’ve got a viable batch of frozen cocktails. Depending on your machine you may have additional wiggle room but if you’re in that general range you’re in good shape. This refractometer is easy to use right out of the box and very affordable.

Update- User Error! I’ve adjusted this review as I’ve found that this device is in fact consistent, with my classic hydrometer and my Tilt hydrometer. Refractometers aren’t accurate when there is alcohol in the solution, so final gravity needs to be measured with a standard hydrometer or using an equation based off OG and a correction factor. I’ve tried the calculator in Brew Father, works for the most part, but I stick to the Tilt readings for FG. So given the accuracy in seeing compared to a second device, the readability, and general ease of use, I’ve updated the review to 5 stars. I don’t see how you could have a better product for the price range. I’d highly recommend a Tilt though, they’re handy as hell, just 10 times more expensive and only helpful in fermentation stages! Original review: Given similar reviews to mine, I wouldn't recommend this device. I've brewed 2 beers and 2 hard seltzers while measuring with this refractometer. I thought the first beer was a fluke, and didn't check it with a hydrometer, but this most recent one was so far off that I had to double check it. Results in the attached photos. Every time I've used this refractometer, I've calibrated to zero with the water I was using for the brew. I thought the other negative reviewers might have been off due to operator error, and I could be using it wrong too, but the hour of Youtube I watched on the subject point to a faulty device.

The product has worked great past few brews, quick read, very accurate. The only issue is when rotating the eye piece to focus the view, you have to rotate it so far that the eye piece starts to fall out… so you have to hold it steady, and finesse it, but it does work…

This is my first refractometer and it appears to work well. I want to bring up my wine making game a notch or two and this is what they say I need. It calibrated very easy and then it was a breeze to check my wine mix (must). The price is great and I can't see were a more expensive one would be much better. It's a basic prism design that seems quite sturdy and accurate. I would buy again without hesitation ... although this one appears to be good enough I probably won't need to.

perfect tool

I have never used one of these before, but it seems to work great! I thought that it would only work on clear liquids. it turns out that it also works on milk and a 'mush' of a sample of fruit. This is perfect for what I wanted to use it for. You only need at most 1/4 of a blueberry, crushed, to get a reading. The reading (the line between 'white area' and 'blue area') is very discrete (or at least very easy to interpolate where the 'line' would be within 1degree brix). Not only THAT, but it seems that the instrument is insensitive to the attitude of the clear cover - in other words, if your sample of a tiny bit of blueberry mush has a seed or two that won't let the cover mate perfectly with the prism, the reading stays the same even if you 'rock' the cover forwards or backwards over the seed that is in between. The only thing it couldn't do (because this one is only up to 30 degrees) is report the sugar content of honey - it's greater than 30. I'd highly recommend this device. Easy to use.

Great product, right price. Used for honey extraction. Would recommend to others

Updated after about 8 months , still functioning well and accurately.

I used this on my home brew beer brew day the day after I received it. Packed well with its own case for storage. Readings seems to be accurate out of the box as I tested it with tap water and it showed 0 Brix... Fine. The issue is in the pictures of the listing it shows Brix and Specific Gravity on the same scale. When it arrived it only shows Brix. I can use an online calculator but for efficiency I was disappointed that it wasn't right there in the view finder. Other than that I was able to record my readings as required.

It is advertised as a dual scale having both Brix and SG scales, however it only has Brix scale and then you need to convert to SG manually

For what it is, this is an excellent product for the price. It only uses a few drops of liquid, hold it directly under a light(I use my range hood) and it is very easy to read. It even has an adjustable eyepiece focus to make the scale crystal clear. HOWEVER, I bought this under the impression that I could measure OG and FG of my home brews. While it seems to measure OG within 1-2 SG points of my hydrometer, the FG will be WAY OFF(mine showed 15 SG points higher) of the actual SG measured with hydrometer. This is because refractometers are not calibrated for alcohol content, and the presence of alcohol will throw off the measurement. It doesn't mean this is a bad product, just that refractometers and not capable of measuring SG of liquid with alcohol in it. There are, however, calculators online that estimate the actual FG, given the refractometer readings at OG and FG. While I'm yet to confirm the accuracy of these online calculators, I will continue double-checking the FG with my hydrometer just to be sure. I have become confident enough to only use the refractometer to measure the OG.

works well, simple calibration and seems accurate in the range I need to measure for sugar percent for slushies