Milwaukee Instruments MA871-BOX Digital Brix Sugar Refractometer for General Measurements with Protective Padded

I bought this digital refractometer to use for this syrup season. Works great for checking the sugar content in brix for both sap and syrup. The only issue I ran into is the device needs to be above 50 degrees in order to perform a test, which sometimes causes issues checking the sap.

I have used this a few times now for beer, wine and cider. It is so much easier to read than the refractometer that you hold up to the light and read the blue background.My only issue is the the battery contact is a little flimsy and sometimes I need to reattach the battery to it. Milwaukee Instruments should have spend the money and used a better quality battery connector. I may replace that at a later time. This is not bad enough to remove any stars but I will update this if it does become and issue.NOTE for Milwaukee if you improve the battery connector I would love to test the new design out.

I've used this to test wort gravity while brewing my last 5 batches of beer. I was getting inconsistent results -- for instance I would press the read button, wait a few seconds and press it again, and the two reading would often be 0.5 degrees different.I emailed the company and got a quick response. The email indicated that the problem was likely due to residue sticking to the lens. The email was ungrammatical and seemed hastily written, so I won't post it here. Below I've listed the procedure I now follow based on the company's email. Since following this procedure I've been getting consistent and accurate results -- rarely do the readings for a particular sample vary more than 0.1 degrees.- Periodically clean the lens with Windex and a q-tip, then rinse with distilled water and dry with a soft cloth.- Calibrate often with steam distilled water (NOT RO water).- After each use, rinse with distilled water, and dry with soft cloth.- For best results, filter the sample before testing. I've been using qualitative filter paper (available on amazon), but I think a coffee filter would work just as well. This is a pain, but that is what the company recommends, and I've gotten much more consistent results by doing this.- Turn on the power before filling the well.- When gathering the sample, squeeze the bulb of the pipette in and out a couple times to mix the sample. Otherwise, your results might be skewed by, for example, a drop of rinse water in the pipette, or non-uniform distribution of gravity in the sample.- Fill the well about 1/2 full.- Take the reading quickly -- don't let the sample sit in the well for a long time. If the sample temperature is very much different than that of the device, wait for the sample to reach room temp before testing, rather than waiting a long time with the sample on the lens for the temperature to stabilize.- Immediately after taking the reading, dump out the sample, rinse with distilled, and dry the lens.- Don't take multiple readings in succession by pressing the "read" button repeatedly. Better to dump out the sample, rinse, dry, and test again.

After using this product now for several months we have discovered that this product is not accurate. We calibrate it each time using the distilled water prior to use and it doesn't seem to make any difference. We ran a comparison using three different hydrometers as compared with the MA871-Box and the hydrometers all gave a very close reading to each other but the MA871 continually gave a far less reading. (I.E. 1.070 on the hydrometer vs.12.37 Brix which = 1.050) We did both hot and cold readings and the hot readings were even further off the mark. After conducting research on the internet to see if there were any correcting calibrations for this MA871 we couldn't find anything. So in summation I am sorry to report that I wouldn't recommend this product. I'll follow up with pictures on my next brew as this was disappointing.

I use this product for our maple sugaring operation. There are other models on the market, and some that seem to be branded and marketed for maple sugaring in a way that inflates their price. This unit does the job, has temperature compensation, and works as advertised. I've used it all season for measuring sap and syrup, and find it to be well made and useful.

Wonderful product, does what it's supposed to do and when initially cross referenced with other brix methods, was very accurate. Just make sure to follow the directions for cleaning. The hard case is a great purchase too, built for the device and has kept it from harms way and the concrete floor several times.

Ease of Use and accurate. This is an excellent alternative to the standard refractometer.

This is a decent instrument for measuring the Brix of sugar solutions (beverages, syrups, etc.). This device is designed and calibrated for sugar (sucrose, presumably). That does not mean it will work for beer and other liquids you might want to measure Brix on. So all these folks complaining that it's not as accurate as their hygrometers for brewing are right--it's not designed for brewing. It is designed to measure sugar dissolved into solution.