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Permalink Reply by Bryan Wray on February 12, 2012 at 6:10pm

For pourovers:

Questionable performance once it really starts to have to deal with excessive heating, but I've been pretty happy with our ADE Slim scales so far.  Replaced the batteries it shipped with a couple weeks ago, but have only had the scales a month or so, meaning overall I can't report on battery life yet.

Love the looks and functionality, though.  Fast, accurate and unnoticeably small when not in use.  Hard to ask for more out of a $30ish scale.

I'll check the make of the scale we use for weighing our shots.  That thing is bullet-proof.  I don't remember ever changing the batteries despite using it every day for nearly two years.  Lots of spills on it, no signs of wear.  Great scale.

-bry

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Permalink Reply by Jay Caragay on February 13, 2012 at 5:49am

For general brewing, we use the Ohaus CL Series scales.  Around $50 each, compact, battery powered and great for brewing.  We've been using them very hard for two years now and no failures.

Can't say the same about the other scales we've tried. One of my personal favorites because of its sharp looks was the Breville Icon scale.  Man, they looked great on our brew bar.  Unfortunately, they're good for home use but are unable to withstand constant use and abuse of a busy brew bar.

Another scale to consider is the PS10 from Penn Scale in 5000g x 1g resolution. We tested it on our brew bar and its a contender. Since we've got enough CL scales, the PS10 now works daily in our kitchen.

Depending on your operations and use, be sure to pay attention to resolution - how much accuracy do you need? 1g, .01g, .001g etc?  The more accuracy needed, the greater the price of scale.  Another important factor (especially for brewing) is timeout. How long before the idle scale shuts down?  I was recently testing a great scale from Harbor Freight that costs $18. Worked great, has enough surface area to hold any brew device and was accurate to 1g (I use a calibrated test to determine accuracy), but the darn thing shuts down after 40 seconds, making it useless for our operations. It's now at home working in my kitchen.

Good luck!

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Permalink Reply by Bryan Wray on February 13, 2012 at 7:25am

The scale we are using for weighing doses and yield on the espresso counter is a "Triton T2."  Cheap, readily available and amazingly durable.  I have found the resolution to be a little bit closer to .2g than .1g, but you're going to have that much variance from shot to shot anyway.

Jay, you might look into the scales that I mentioned above if you like the looks of the Breville but found them worthless in functionality.  I also liked that appearance but thought they were junky.  The ADE scales have been a dream with a much less "cluttery" look then the Ohaus.

-bry

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Permalink Reply by Matt B on February 14, 2012 at 2:33pm

Thanks for the replies. That's good info.

Bryan, the ADE scales are sharp looking, and it's good to know they're doing the trick so far. There was one review from a serious home user who said it ate batteries like they were going out of style. Every month or so? And he was just using it in the kitchen. Maybe not a big deal, but I had a little pocket escali that I'd use for cupping that seemingly killed a battery overnight. Still not sure what I did wrong. Sometimes timing out/auto shut-off can be a good thing, I guess.

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Permalink Reply by Bryan Wray on February 14, 2012 at 7:06pm

You can get 100 batteries for $20 (result of a 15 second google search).  Let's say we have to replace a battery every 2 weeks instead of once a month.  I'm still very okay with paying $20 about every 2 years for batteries if it powers a scale I actually want to look at and use.

... just sayin'...

-bry

Matt B said:

Thanks for the replies. That's good info.

Bryan, the ADE scales are sharp looking, and it's good to know they're doing the trick so far. There was one review from a serious home user who said it ate batteries like they were going out of style. Every month or so? And he was just using it in the kitchen. Maybe not a big deal, but I had a little pocket escali that I'd use for cupping that seemingly killed a battery overnight. Still not sure what I did wrong. Sometimes timing out/auto shut-off can be a good thing, I guess.

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Permalink Reply by Troy J Mallett on February 16, 2012 at 4:00pm

I had been using a fairly expensive Salter scale in my kitchen for a while and hated it because it was programmed to start with oz and need to be cycled to g. The accuracy was good enough 1g resolution. If I was to ever get another scale of that sort, being able to plug it in would be a benefit as well as the ability to turn off the auto shutoff.
I have been using the ADE pocket scale for espresso, and generally unhappy due to the quick auto shut off. Works well enough, but wouldn't recommend it.

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