Kitchen Scale

I'm looking for a highly accurate kitchen scale to handle small measurements. I'd like to play with some molecular gastronomy and I know it's going to require extremely accurate measurements to get it right. Can anybody give me some tips on either models or what to look for?

Take a look at

http://www.homeclick.com/web/catalog/pr ... pid=198344

You can go to their whole collection from that page. I couldn't make the link to their scale main page copy correctly. Their prices are quite good.

I'm not certain these will be accurate enough for what you have in mind.
My Sohnle says it's accurate to one-tenth ounce up to 5 pounds 8 ounces, and accurate to two-tenths on an ounce from there to its capacity of 11 pounds. The particular one in the link says accurate to .1 ounce all the way to 11 pounds. They all have the tare feature so you can use any container or add measured amounts of successive ingredients as you go.

You probably don't want a kitchen scale, which are generally only accurate to 1/8th or 1/10th of an ounce. You probably want something that would be used in a lab that can measure to grams or percentage of grams.

I would check a medical supply or scientific supply house.

Best,
Michael

I use the Tanita AP101: http://www.thecompetitiveedge.com/shop/ ... 60791.html

I used the 1479V at El Bulli and it's good too - and it costs a little less:
http://www.thecompetitiveedge.com/shop/ ... 60806.html

I wrote about scales in my CHOW Gear column: http://www.chow.com/stories/10409

Here's an article on Chow written by Louisa Chu:
Toss Your Measuring Cups

You'll want a scale that can measure in 10th gram increments. I can't vouch for the quality of the Tanita scales and it seems rather expensive, though.

I use My Weigh scales for bread baking and have been very happy with it. They have a line of scales that measure in 10ths of a gram.

This is a really good online store that specializes in scales: [url]http://www.oldwillknottscales.com/[[/url]
You'll likely find what you need there for less.

edit: too slow :)

go to a head shop. All head shops have tiny scales that look like the size of calculators.

These scales are designed to measure tiny amounts of weight - like coke or bud. However - they are just as effective if you want to measure salt and pepper. (i have all my sausage recipes broken down by gram/lb of meat. So for every 1 lb of meat, you use X grams of salt, Y grams of pepper, etc)

So, not only will you have a great kitchen scale - but if you ever end up selling drugs, you've got that under control, too

djenks wrote:go to a head shop. All head shops have tiny scales that look like the size of calculators.

These scales are designed to measure tiny amounts of weight - like coke or bud. However - they are just as effective if you want to measure salt and pepper. (i have all my sausage recipes broken down by gram/lb of meat. So for every 1 lb of meat, you use X grams of salt, Y grams of pepper, etc)

So, not only will you have a great kitchen scale - but if you ever end up selling drugs, you've got that under control, too

<alton_brown> Now that's a multi-tasker! </alton_brown>

Jamieson22 wrote:

djenks wrote:go to a head shop. All head shops have tiny scales that look like the size of calculators.

These scales are designed to measure tiny amounts of weight - like coke or bud. However - they are just as effective if you want to measure salt and pepper. (i have all my sausage recipes broken down by gram/lb of meat. So for every 1 lb of meat, you use X grams of salt, Y grams of pepper, etc)

So, not only will you have a great kitchen scale - but if you ever end up selling drugs, you've got that under control, too

<alton_brown> Now that's a multi-tasker! </alton_brown>

</alton_brown> As I've said 10,000 times before...everything is a multi-tasker here in my kitchen...except of course the fire extinguisher. </alton_brown>

Tanita and MyWeigh are both good quality scales.

I am employed as a service engineer for Chicagoland's largest industrial and laboratory scale distribution and service company.

During scale selection, there's 2 performance characteristics to be addressed: capacity and graduation size. Start out by evaluating the grad size you need, then see what capacities are available.

To determine your capacity range, bear in mind that this is the sum of the material being weighed AND the container the material is in. For a kitchen scale, most ingredients can be divided and weighed in portions so as to stay below the capacity of the scale. That Pyrex beaker or stoneware bowl is probably pretty heavy so consider lighter containers for weighing.

In general, the measure of a scale is the number of displayed divisions it will show you. The scale MikeLM mentioned has an 11lb=5kg=176oz capacity with a 0.1oz graduation size for 1760 displayed graduations. While probably sufficient for most kitchen use, in my profession this would be considered ..umm.. junk and certainly not meeting jpchust's requirement for high accuracy in an experimental application. Everything else equal, the cost of a scale increases with the number of divisions. In the biz, we call a weight measuring device with greater than 50,000 (or so) displayed divisions a balance.

There's usually a substantial price jump from 0.1g to 0.01g division size. This is because the more sensitive balances use a much more complicated mechanism (magnetic force restoration/load compensation) for measuring the loads than lesser scales (using load cells/strain gauge transducers). Watch out for some gem scales that look great with 0.01 or 0.001 g resolution but are very low capacities. For accurate measurements of things used sparingly in the kitchen like herbs or coloring agents, I think you're looking at a 0.01g grad size.

These may get kind of expensive. My personal kitchen scale is 1300x0.01 grams...130,000 displayed divisions. This stickered for around $1200 new.

*ETA: Very high end but off-the-shelf balances will give you 20 million+ displayed divisions. $12,000. Food for thought.*

i now know more about scales than 99% of people on earth.

Try here: http://www.sciplus.com

Hi,

I currently use a Taylor digital scale purchased at Costco.

Presently, I am prepping two loaves of bread when I intended to make only one. Why? My scale was weighing flour at half scale: 32 ounces of flour weighed in at roughly 16 ounces.

I wasn't in the mood to put flour back in the bag, so I committed myself to making two loaves. To test how far off my scale, I used a stick of butter to check: four ounces weighed in at 2.5 ounces.

My Dad played with it and eventually four ounces of butter weighed in at four ounces, though he did see what I saw initially: 2.5 ounces.

I guess I will be using the butter stick to test my scale before use in the future. By the time I stop and get over confident, it will play with me once more.

Regards,
CAthy2

Cathy2 wrote:Why? My scale was weighing flour at half scale: 32 ounces of flour weighed in at roughly 16 ounces.

It is very, very unusual for an electrical problem to cause this sort of inaccurate weight result, particularly to be cleared up after being 'played with.' Far more likely is a mechanical issue of some kind. Perhaps a component is misaligned or some debris has found its way inside and causing what we call a bind. A bind is when the active portion of the scale or item being weighed is in contact with anything else. Binds usually make things appear lighter than they are.

For example, if you grab the towel rack while on your bathroom scale, some of your weight won't be detected and the reported number is inaccurate. Another one is the bathroom scale pushed up against and digging into the wall. This prevents the scale from moving freely which yields, again, an inaccurate result. At the grocery check out, the scale built into the counter at the end of the belt can get gunked up by all sorts of unpleasant things like plum stems, onion skins, chicken drippings, produce labels, olive pits, etc.

While an inaccurate scale is never desirable, you hope that the cause is a simple bind since the fix is frequently very easy: just clear the bind.

HI,

Thanks! I will keep any eye out next time to see if it is unintended environmental related error.

Thanks!

Regards,
Cathy2