North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Michael Dossett <phainopepla@yahoo.com>]

I haven't read most of this thread as I am just now catching up with being 
away from my email for a while so maybe someone has already brought this up, 
but Brix is not a measure of sugar content.  Brix is a measure of the percent 
soluble solids.  In fruit, this tends to be dominated by sugars but there are 
many other compounds that will influence Brix measurements.

Michael


Michael Dossett
Corvallis, Oregon
www.Mdossettphoto.com
phainopepla@yahoo.com


--- On Mon, 10/12/09, Kieran &/or Donna <holycow@frontiernet.net> wrote:

> From: Kieran &/or Donna <holycow@frontiernet.net>
> Subject: Re: [NAFEX] syrups. - Brix and sugar cont
> To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Date: Monday, October 12, 2009, 6:19 AM
> 
> 
>  
>  
> 
> 
>  
> Yuck, high tannins,
> what a thought.  I 
> was wondering if acids could do it.  Of course such a
> fruit would have it's 
> uses.  One small kainth per gallon of peach wine would
> probably make it 
> quite astringent enough.  But I am intrigued. 
> 
>     Some
> farmers are using the brix 
> of their crop leaves to tell them when either too much or
> too little rain is 
> stressing their crop to the point that they need to do
> something.  I had 
> assumed that brix meant sugar content, but if it includes
> other things, it 
> probably implies that the plant is making and moving things
> that it needs to 
> protect itself.  I don't think that tannins are
> what they are looking for 
> as most of our food crop plants don't seem to have
> particularly high 
> tannins.  Hmmmm.... in plants that do make tannins,
> they go up not down 
> when there is injury.  Take oak trees attacked by
> gypsy moths, they can run 
> the tannins so high that the caterpillars are unable to eat
> or digest the 
> leaves.  The other reason why I don't think the
> brix readings on field 
> crops shows tannins is that in general a healthy plant
> tastes better than one 
> that's had too much or too little rain.  They go
> from watery on the one 
> hand to bitter on the other hand.  In carrots or
> broccoli, the bitterness 
> is from "terpenes".   Anyone know what
> they are?  Donna 
>  
> 
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