Browsing on our site and reading our fruits’ different product sheets, you will surely have noticed several times the indication of Brix degrees. It is a fact that we care a lot because we guarantee 100% the sweetness of our products.
What is a Brix degree?
This particular unit of measurement owes its name to the German mathematician and engineer Adolf Ferdinand Wenceslaus Brix (1798-1870), who first measured the density of a juice of vegetable origin: the sugars contained in a liquid are the only substances to have optical activity, that is the ability to deflect light.
By measuring the Brix degrees and therefore all the substances capable of deflecting light, it is possible to obtain the concentration of sugars contained in a specific liquid or juice. This unit of measurement is used to verify the quantity of sugars in different foods, not only fruit and vegetables, but also wine and soft drinks, and to determine the degree of quality.
For example, a melon is considered of low quality if it has a Brix degree equal to 8°, while of high quality if it reaches 18°.
THE BRIX DEGREES OF OUR MELONS VARY FROM 14 TO 18° AND ARE THEREFORE CONSIDERED HIGH QUALITY.
At this point, many of you will wonder how we measure the Brix degrees of our melons?
The degree of sweetness of fruit is usually measured through the refractometer, a particular instrument, of which there are also pocket versions. However, the use of this tool provides for the opening of the fruit, which therefore can no longer be sold … it would therefore only allow the measurement of a sample of the product and would not give a 100% guarantee of the quality of our fruit.
For this reason, at the Azienda Agricola Lorenzini Naturamica of Sermide, we use the advanced technology of the Well Brix machine, directly from Tokyo to control all our fruits via infrared rays. There is no need to open the fruit, the laser beam of this innovative machine investigates beyond the peel and analyzes different elements of the fruit including the Brix degrees, providing a precise indication of the sugar present in the pulp and therefore the degree of ripeness and the level of quality of our products.
