Kickstarter Spectrometer

[thegreatbrewnorth]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/903107259/scio-your-sixth-sense-a-pocket-molecular-sensor-fo


I pledged for this when it first came out, seemed pretty cool and possibly useful for a number of different things.

Now that I've gotten into homebrewing, I was wondering if this might be able to be implemented for that purpose. I don't know too much about using spectrometry for brewing, but I found it interested that during their latest update for backers, the creators mentioned that one of its uses that they've received feedback on is homebrewing.

What ways can we homebrewers utilize a refractometer for our brews?

Assuming it works of course. It is also cloud based as the more things are scanned it will populate a reference database, so it might become more useful over time.

 

[aangel]

I believe gas chromatography's more appropriate for beer than spectrometry though they miiight be the same thing. Not sure. In any case with the former, possibly the latter, you can get exact content of all your flavor compounds and off-products for fine tuning your brewing. So Diacetyl, DMS, etc etc.

 

[ajdelange]

Spectrophotometry is used for several applications in brewing but it is transmission spectroscopy, not reflection spectroscopy which is what this device does. One of the common uses of visible transmission spectroscopy in brewing is the measurement of beer color. Other analyses in the visible include FAN, the contents of various ions in brewing water, and diacetyl. After color probably the most common determination done with spectrometry is beer bitterness but this requires a UV spectrometer. UV is clearly a capability that this device does not provide. Given its physical size it clearly cannot have much resolution. In short, looks like a lot of hype to me. Note that the actual performance parameters of the device are well hidden (if they are on the website at all). And they raised $2M? Guess P. T. Barnum was right.