Beer Blog: Talking About Tilt

This week on the beer blog, we’re talking up our favourite home brew tool - the Tilt Hydrometer. The Tilt is an all around great toy to have for any homebrewer. Tilt’s goal is to help homebrewers brew better beer.

So what is this little doo-dad?

The Tilt hydrometer and thermometer is a bluetooth enabled measurement device, designed to work inside your carboy. You never have to take a sample of your wort or beer - only to pour it out - again. Tilt looks unassuming, enclosed in a polycarbonate tube - but at its heart is a workhorse. Inside the tube is the battery and circuitry that powers the Tilt’s revolutionary technology - which we will cover in a minute.

The tube makes Tilt buoyant, while the device inside is designed to sink. This causes it to ‘tilt’ in the wort. As fermentation progresses and specific gravity drops, the Tilt sinks and becomes more vertical. The in-tube chip calculates these changes in tilt and outputs them as specific gravity readings.

What makes Tilt a great addition to your brew kit is how you read and track your measurements. It is easy to use, and required much less work than taking readings with a traditional hydrometer. To use Tilt, choose how you want to track your data - we will talk about your options below. Then, simply sanitize Tilt and drop it into your fermenting brew. Tilt will start reading instantly, taking readings every 10 seconds. This allows Tilt to average readings during turbulent fermentation. When you’re done with the Tilt, simply clean it and stand it on its end to put it into battery-saving sleep mode.
Over time, Tilt readings will help you understand the mysterious process of fermentation without opening your fermentor or carboy. Tilt gives you the ability to track trends, recreate consistent batches, see when fermentation is finished, and gives you a new level of brewing control. This can be especially helpful for meads and lagers, where you need to take action at a specific SG point.

Data Tracking

Data tracking is the revolutionary part of the Tilt. Not only do you have the ability to see readings at any point in fermentation, Tilt automatically tracks these trends over time. Tilt has been integrated into a number of platforms, so you can pick the one that works best for your purposes. Just looking to track data? No problem. Looking to share this data with your brew buds? Easy.
From Tilt:  In addition to the built-in Google Sheets cloud logging integration, there is also Brewstat.us, Monitor.beer, CraftBeerPi, CraftMetrics, and Brewfather.app that each provide a unique way to collect and analyze your data remotely. We also show you how to "bring your own cloud" by copying our Google Sheets template integration and running it on your own Gmail account.

Tilt 2.0

Tilt has been recently upgraded, here are some of the new features:

• 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.

Specific Gravity Readings:

Thermometer: