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Fluctuating Brix values - Fruit Juice inquiry

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Anna21

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Posted 18 December 2018 - 12:54 PM

Hi Everyone! 

 

I was hoping someone can advise me with the following: 

 

One of the products we manufacture is a dairy blend concentrate (1+7). We currently have a situation where the Brix of our mixture differs between batches of the same flavour. For example, if producing peach flavour, the Brix will be within specification (say 5.0) when the final volume (say 5800 L) has been reached. However every now and again the brix of that exact same product, at the exact same final volume (5800L) is suddenly 5.3. Why would this happen? 

 

I know components in the water and citric acid etc has an influence on the Brix, however the ingredients in the different mixtures are exactly the same. We use Reverse Osmosis water. We also make use of the same, digital refractometer to measure the brix. 

 

If anyone has some advise, I would appreciate it! 

 

Thank you :)

Anna



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Posted 18 December 2018 - 02:39 PM

Anna

 

You will always get fluctuations in brix even in the same lot. There is no way of getting the exact same homogeneous mixture in each grab sample taken.  You may want to think about taking say 5 samples/lot/batch and averaging the brix out while including corrective actions if 1 sample is way of out spec


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pHruit

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Posted 18 December 2018 - 02:56 PM

I know components in the water and citric acid etc has an influence on the Brix, however the ingredients in the different mixtures are exactly the same. We use Reverse Osmosis water. We also make use of the same, digital refractometer to measure the brix. 

 

 

I think you may need to consider what you mean by "exactly the same". Surely there are tolerance defined for these components, rather than a single value?

Is your refractomer corrected for temperature? That may have some impact if not.

As you're measuring refractometrically there are a large number of things that have an effect - aside from the overall sugar content, different sugar types have different refractive indices (at the same concentration and temp), and that's before you start considering the added complexity of all the other soluble solids.

I'd suggest setting up your final product spec with a tolerance to take such things into account - you'll need to consider the raw materials to decide what would be both reasonable in terms of minimising finished product variation, whilst still being reliably achievable assuming all of the components are in spec.



kkaiser

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Posted 03 January 2019 - 07:51 PM

I work for a company that manufactures refractometers. As cool as those instruments are, there really are so many variables that could skew readings slightly... temperature, light, how well the sample well is cleaned between measurements, possible must or pulp residue, Do you have a plus or minus range that you work within or are you needing it to be exact? Also, are you zeroing before each measurement?





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