How to test the sweetness of dragon fruits
Growers often use a BRIX meter (Br) to test the sweetness of dragon fruits. It measures the sugar content in the juice. For example, Brix 1 means there's 1 gram of sucrose (a type of sugar) in 100 grams of juice. The sweetness of dragon fruits often goes from 10 to over 20.
A Brix refractometer looks something like this:
To test the sweetness, cut open your dragon fruit. Scoop out a little piece & mash it until it's a bit watery. Then, scoop some of that juice & put it on your Brix meter. The trick is no flesh, no seeds, and only the juice.
After putting the juice on, you can look through the eyepiece with some light shining through the glass lid:
You may see something like this:
We can see the yellow part. Where it stops shows the sweetness number of our juice. This shows a 29.4% Br, which is very high. This is just an example. Usually, dragon fruits about 20 or slightly higher are super sweet already. Sometimes, it may be around 15 but the taste is still very good.
| Brix | Sweetness |
|---|---|
| 18-20+ | Super sweet |
| 15-17 | Medium sweet |
| <15 | Just okay |
See it done with the Asunta dragon fruit here.
| Good Brix meter |
|---|
 |
| Easy to use |
| Built in Brix scale |
| Accurate reading |
There's another style of Brix meter that doesn't require any look-throughs. It works similar to the other one. You juice out what you want to measure (no seeds, no pulp). And you put some of that liquid into the measuring container.
After a couple of seconds, the number will show up automatically on the screen. See it done here:
| Best digital refractometer |
|---|
 |
| Excellent sugar check |
| Portable |
| Clear digital display |
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