Re: Brix

Absolutely.

Your segment "....various oils, ketones, aldehydes, acids, esters" is significant and illustrative of but a few chemical species which can affect brix. Add alcohols and total dissolved ionic solids as well. Total water content too. The juice of a dry apple should have a higher solute concentration and give a diffferent reading than the same apple on the day it was picked ! Brix may thus only be an inverse measure of water content in many cases !!!

I posted the original link, because there is a large company looking for a quick way to judge mineral content in foods. They are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for the answer !

Thus, my posting the link represents a potential commercial opportunity for those who believe that brix readings are useful in quickly providing information concerning mineral content ! If brix is truly a good test for minerals, then someone here can make some money. I hereby dedicate my portion of the reasonable finder's fee to which I might otherwise be entitled to CZ.

My understanding is that refractive index is but one metric. When we classify materials, we rarely, if ever use a single parameter. People may not believe this, but their argument is not with me, but with the way organic chemists have done things for over a century and a half.

A better tool would be quantitative IR.


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