Weigh out of fruit

With out knowing how much fruit you are needing to weigh, you could try using a large fish scale. Most go up to around 10-15 kg (with about 100g resolution)and some even let you tare it. If the model does not have a tare mode then you could always just do the old (total - pail/hook = fruit or pail/hook + fruit = total) method.

What does everyone else use?

Hope this helps,

Rob

K.J.Kristiansen wrote:

How precise are you looking to be? You could probably pick up a baby scale at a garage sale for very little, simply calibrate the scale to compensate for the container. Not sure just how high you're trying to go, though.

If you're looking for a large scale system with digital precision, that will be very expensive, I'm sure.

Also, keep in mind that "precise" doesn't necessarily mean "accurate".

;-)

Woods

How much do you want to weigh ?? I use(ed) a bathroom scale till I found out that every 5 gal bucket of apples weighed 30 lbs. Now I don't need one for them. Once I used a big plastic tub I got from wall mart to weigh them all at once (90 lb) using 2 2x4's to keep it up enough to read it, but the 5 gal buckets work nicer. If your going to want to weigh more than that, you should consider the headache of lifting a bunch of weight up to a hanging scale & hooking to it or having to hoist it up every time you want to weigh something. In larger batches of wine as it appears you are into, accuracy to a pound or 2 is all thats necessary. Don't sweat the small stuff, if you think your close to what you want but not sure, throw in a coupla' more pounds just for good measure. I've experimented with anywhere from 60 to 90 pounds of apples in a 60 gal. batch to see which would be better & it was ALL good. Good luck.

K.J.,

Sounds like you'd like to have a grocers produce scale! I don't know exactly what you mean by 'larger', but I use a Duralit scale that measures to 8.5lbs. It's called simply (and somewhat presumptuously) The Scale. I find that for many 5/6 gallon musts I need to weigh the fruit in portions, as 8.5lbs just doesn't go high enough. Not too much of a problem, or at least not enough of one to urge me to upgrade. The scale does come in handy for both beer and meads though, and it's reasonably compact, which is important for me since I brew in the kitchen and don't have a dedicated brewing area I can just leave the equipment set up (or hung from the ceiling) in.

Thanks for replying. I think the fish-weight may be what I should look for. I usually weigh up some 15-20 kg in batches. Of course you are right w.r.t. the no need for high precision (or accuracy?). Reason for trying to be a bit careful here is that I use wild berries which sometimes differ a lot in water content (even the same type of berries). I also like to build up a datafile for the normal content(and variation) of acids in these berries.