📏 Milwaukee Instruments MA871 Brix Refractometer, Digital, 0-85% Range Review

Significantly improved stability and efficiency of my commercial brewery. Now I can quickly stop purging when I get to the exhaust. Depending on the party I may have 2 starts - Target OG and Session OG aka Partigyle. I like it. I also made my own case out of Michael's craft box and styrofoam. The total was $10 versus $30 for a factory case.

I love this unit. Great for beer, but I bought it primarily for wine as the view makes it difficult to read when the wine must is dark and cloudy. The only downside is that the minimum temp is 50F so I can't store it in my garage in the winter or it won't work so I have to keep it at home and bring my dropper to count. All in all a great device and I would buy it again.

I'm in love with this tool. No more big rehearsals. No more wrong readings from poorly made refractometers. Now I take more measurements throughout the process because it's such a pleasure and it's so accurate. Keeps a good calibration. Good investment in my brewing lab. I'm a big fan of Milwaukee products. They have a fair price and just work without any problems.

Great for helping us measure and record Brix in our Artisan Jellies. Our state Food and Drug Administration requires us to test all of the jellies we make and report our results. This device is much easier to use, although it is slightly more expensive than portable devices, there are much more expensive devices out there. We have been using this refractometer for a few months now and would highly recommend it.

Love the ease of use and potential accuracy. I use this to measure the brix of wine grapes. More than 10 Brix seems accurate, but below that value everything seems fine. Using a more expensive lab calibrated Brix meter the accuracy was 20s. After calibrating with the same distilled water both meters read 0, when testing wine mine showed 8.5 and the opposite lab meter 1.2.

This is a defective return! Complete with someone's dirty fingerprints all over the lens and rattling noises! No the noise is not coming from the battery cable, I caught it by shaking it vigorously. The lens is covered with dust, and inside, where there is a holographic paint, there are chips. Someone tried to reattach the display film. Overall it's not what I expected, it also seems to be a different color and maybe a different design than what I see in the picture. I'm sending it back…

I work in the metal liquids industry and was trying to use this instead of a hand held refractometer. I zeroed this and the manual and in 3 out of 4 tests this differed by at least 0.5 Brix. When used on fresh clear and clear emulsions this is an average error. I have triple tested it with another brand of handheld refractometer that matched my first handheld refractometer, but this electric refractometer doesn't seem to work. Sometimes the reading is 0.5 higher, then the next sample of the…

My Hanna digital refractometer has failed after 3 years of light use. The Milwaukee Instruments digital refractometer is an identical instrument with the same accuracy and specifications, same configuration, shape, etc., but in a different color. Also, both devices are made in Europe, I would say, by the same manufacturer who only changes the outer casing for each company. The Milwaukee Instruments versions are much cheaper. I use this device for my own brewing and am very satisfied. I compared

I work in the metal liquid industry and have been trying to use this in place of a hand held refractometer. I zeroed this and the manual and in 3 out of 4 tests this differed by at least 0.5 Brix. When used on fresh clear and clear emulsions this is an average error. I've tested it 3 times with another brand of handheld refractometer that matched my first handheld refractometer, but this electric refractometer doesn't seem to work. Sometimes the reading is 0.5 higher, then the next sample of…

This product falls into one of those categories - it's something you should have, but it can't justify spending big bucks on laboratory quality sample equipment. There are too many other things I need in brewing beer and my hydrometers work pretty well. The problem with using an areometer is wasted beer. How much easier is it to get a few drops out of your fermenting beer than to pour it into a test can and then refill it. After reading a lot about digital refractometers I settled on this one…