Brix - How Sweet It Is...

Brix, or degrees Brix (°Bx), is defined as the number of grams of sugar in a measured weight of solution. 1°B or °Bx is 1 g of sugar in 100 g of solution or 10 g of sugar in 1000 g of solution (about one liter). Fruit inherently possesses some sugar, with only grapes having enough natural sugar and acid ratio to make wine directly without amending. Haskap fruit is too high in acid and too low in sugar to make wine without first diluting with water and, secondly, adding sugar (the winemaking term for adding sugar is called chaptalization).

Yeast use sugar to make alcohol during their life processes. So if you know how much sugar you have in your juice (or how much you added), you can approximate how much alcohol you can expect to be rewarded with at the end of fermentation. We measured Brix the first time before we pitched the yeast and found it to be 23 °Bx. This means that each 1000 g of solution had about 230 g of sugar.

The measurement of specific gravity relative to water of the juice (specific gravity is the solids and such in your mixture) will be done with a hydrometer, and if the hydrometer is not marked in degrees Brix but a different scale, then you can use an equivalency chart to know what the number is. The hydrometer is photographed below in the measuring container which holds the fermenting strained juice/wine. It is measured in degrees Brix (°Bx).

The hydrometer is a very sensitive piece of equipment; well-balanced hydrometers that are certified by Science Directorate in Canada will set you back about $200 each (a requirement of Excise Canada) but, for daily use, a less expensive one will suffice. The ones we purchased were about $35 each and we are very careful with them. The SEDs ones are reserved for final alcohol calculations; they are not generally used daily.

The photo below shows a reading of 17.6 °Bx, read at the bottom of the meniscus (the meniscus is the lower part of the curve liquid makes at the surface). From that, we calculate the progress of our fermentation, subtracting the reading from our initial reading (which was 23 °Bx). So we have used up 23 - 17.6 or 5.4 (°Bx), or 54 g of sugar in a liter of the fermenting wine. From that, we multiply by 0.55 or so, and approximate that our wine is now at about .55 x 5.4) or 3% alc/vol. We started with about 230 g of sugar in each liter of juice with the intent of making approximately 12.5% to 13.5% alcohol, written on the bottle as % alc/vol.

Many winemakers use either Oechsle or Baumé scales instead, but the process is exactly the same and just the numbers vary in how they calculate the same % alc/vol.

Reading of 17.6

°Bx

This is verbally stated as 17.6 degrees Brix.

Sugar Choice

Because we were adamant from the beginning that all products used for actual fermentation be Canadian produced and acquired, we have chosen to use Taber Beet Sugar from Alberta, Canada, or Canadian-produced Honey (Hannigan Honey in Shellbrook, SK) in all our fruit wines. Since sugar beets are grown and processed in Alberta, Canada and sugar cane is imported, the choice was easy. The Taber Company identifies their Beet Sugar by starting their lot number with 22, notable in the photo below.