Brix - Background

Background

First Karl Balling, then Adolf Brix and finally the Normal-Commission's under Fritz Plato prepared pure sucrose solutions of known strength, measured their specific gravities and prepared tables of percent sucrose by weight vs. measured specific gravity. 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.

Equipped 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 same as % sucrose w/w. A vintner could measure the specific gravity of his must and enter the Brix table to find the must °Bx value i.e. its % sucrose w/w. It is important to point out that neither wort nor must is a solution of pure sucrose in pure water. 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). In any case, even if °Bx are not representative of the exact amount of sugar in a must or fruit juice they can be used for comparison of relative sugar content.