In modern times, hydrometers are still widely used, but where greater accuracy is required, an electronic oscillating U-tube meter may be employed. Measurement Specific gravity Īs specific gravity was the basis for the Balling, Brix and Plato tables, dissolved sugar content was originally estimated by measurement of specific gravity using a hydrometer or pycnometer. In any case, even if ☋x is not representative of the exact amount of sugar in a must or fruit juice, it can be used for comparison of relative sugar content. Many other compounds are dissolved as well but these are either sugars, which behave very similarly to sucrose with respect to specific gravity as a function of concentration, or compounds which are present in small amounts (minerals, hop acids in wort, tannins, acids in must). It is important to point out that neither wort nor must is a solution of pure sucrose in pure water. Similarly, a vintner could enter the specific gravity of his must into the Brix table to obtain the ☋x, which is the concentration of sucrose by percent mass. Balling measured specific gravity to 3 decimal places, Brix to 5, and the Normal-Eichungs Kommission to 6 with the goal of the Commission being to correct errors in the 5th and 6th decimal place in the Brix table.Įquipped with one of these tables, a brewer wishing to know how much sugar was in his wort could measure its specific gravity and enter that specific gravity into the Plato table to obtain °Plato, which is the concentration of sucrose by percentage mass. In the early 1800s, Karl Balling, followed by Adolf Brix, and finally the Normal-Commissions under Fritz Plato, prepared pure sucrose solutions of known strength, measured their specific gravities and prepared tables of percent sucrose by mass vs. 5 Brix and actual dissolved solids content.Because the differences between the systems are of little practical significance (the differences are less than the precision of most common instruments) and wide historical use of the Brix unit, modern instruments calculate mass fraction using ICUMSA official formulas but report the result as ☋x. And finally the degree Oechsle used in, among others, German and Swiss wine making industries.Ī sucrose solution with an apparent specific gravity (20°/20 ☌) of 1.040 would be 9.99325 ☋x or 9.99359 °P while the representative sugar body, the International Commission for Uniform Methods of Sugar Analysis (ICUMSA), which favours the use of mass fraction, would report the solution strength as 9.99249%. The ☋x is traditionally used in the wine, sugar, carbonated beverage, fruit juice, fresh produce, maple syrup and honey industries.Ĭomparable scales for indicating sucrose content are the degree Plato (°P), which is widely used by the brewing industry, the degree Balling, which is the oldest of the three systems and therefore mostly found in older textbooks, but also still in use in some parts of the world. For example, when one adds equal amounts of salt and sugar to equal amounts of water, the degrees of refraction (BRIX) of the salt solution rises faster than the sugar solution. If the solution contains dissolved solids other than pure sucrose, then the ☋x only approximates the dissolved solid content. One degree Brix is 1 gram of sucrose in 100 grams of solution and represents the strength of the solution as percentage by mass. For other uses, see Brix (disambiguation).ĭegrees Brix (symbol ☋x) is the sugar content of an aqueous solution.