Forgive me for noob question about home ro and brix

[tapdrinker]

I just got my spectometer and calibrated with distilled water.
My sap from the sugar maples is over 6% already.
Will my home ro system boost it beyond 12 if I remove 1/2 the water or will my membranes gum up?
Thanks in advance.

[ecp]

Whatever trees you are tapping bring them to my house. :D
all kidding aside id be impressed if a Home RO system could remove half the water from 6% as they are generally lower pressure with no recirculation which would cause your membranes to clog.

[DrTimPerkins]

I just got my spectometer and calibrated with distilled water.

You most likely mean refractometer. Does your device have ATC (automatic temperature compensation)? If not, or adequate time to equilibrate was not provided, a cold sap sample will read higher than a sample at room temperature. Therefore, if you calibrated in the house, you could be reading artificially high if you tested cold sap. Hopefully that isn't the case and you're just fortunate to have really sweet trees.

[tapdrinker]

ah... that's highly possible. I'll retest sap at room temp. Thanks for the heads up.

[tapdrinker]

Okay re-tested with warm sap-.5 brix difference. It's probably too warm honestly. When I calibrated my spectro-I used distilled cold water from the fridge.
I'm sure day to day it will be different as well from the trees. I prefer to be able to be close to real brix at tap on tree-so if I calibrate with cold h2o and use cold sap-it should be very very close... Right?
yes it is refracto... sorry for using the wrong word.

[tapdrinker]

Tim-and yes it has atc right next to the lense.

[tapdrinker]

I found this article to be extremely helpful in choosing trees to tap.
https://employees.csbsju.edu/ssaupe/CV/conger_final_report.pdf