Questions about Brix and refractometers are floating up. Here's a web site that will give a refractometer description. Westover is simply a manufacturer... http://www.westoverscientific.com/refract.html OTOH, here is a website for Pike Agri-Lab and they know what to do with the devices... http://www.maine.com/tse/pals/monitor.html Here's a website that indicates main-line customers really are looking for better flavor... http://www.seattletimes.com/extra/browse/html97/ripe_081397.html I apologize for not describing what I have been talking about. A refractometer is simply a small laboratory instrument used to detect the refractive index of a liquid that has *something* dissolved in it. It can be calibrated, or scaled, to read many different substances. For instance, common Brix refractometers measure 0-32 Brix. A straight-up lab refractometer might read 0.900 to 1.200 refractive index. A honey refractometer is supposedly designed to measure the water in honey instead of the other way around. A battery or anti-freeze refractometer would measure both a lead-acid battery condition and/or the freezing point of an ethylene glycol solution. A urine refractometer measures in a scale appropropriate to the medical community. There is even a refractometer scaled (a pun, a pun) to help fish farmers keep the water at exactly the right consistency. You name a process where it is important to scientifically and accurately measure a solution concentration and a refractometer will be at hand. At any rate, they are *all* the same. They are little hand held gizmos that look like a telescope, except that the end where the drop of plant juice (in the case of Brix) goes is on a slant or angle. You put the drop on, press it out flat with a little hinged plate, and view through it to "make a reading." Simple? But of course: I've handed one to 4 y.o. city children, old folks, medium age folks, people at flea markets, children clustering around in migrant farm camps---you name it. ALL instantly knew what to do: squeeze the drop; look through the tool; call out the reading. It takes about 2 seconds for them to correlate that the higher number of two or more tested items means better taste. You have to be able to read numbers to review a basic chart so that you can understand the range of values for any particular produce. Refractometers by the millions are used around the world, but mostly in food processing plants, ag departments, produce buyers, and laboratories. My hope is to put them in kitchens. I visualize millions of homemakers gaining the courage to tell the chemical farmers, "We aren't going to tolerate your watery crap any more." Refractometers are cheap: USD$130 gets you a commercial quality device that will last forever. If it was possible to make the prism out of glass, instead of industrial shappire, they would be cheaper yet. Whoever was speaking of big prices on here was thinking of automated digital read-out models used in food processing factories. Please understand that my Brix=Quality comments here are ONLY for fresh fruits and vegetables. Although I have private data that I use to predict the ultimate quality of produce *while it is growing*, the basic Brix charts are designed to help a buyer identify the best possible food to take home. And please understand that Brix is a relative means of determing whatever it is that any specific plant is supposed to do. If you were testing foxglove and one plant was decidedly more Brixy than the other, I would bet my last dollar that a chemical analysis would reveal it had more digitalis than the other. In closing I will ask this: why would anyone think that it doesn't work on milk or opaque liquids? Mine works fine enough to tell me that store-bought milk is 10-11 Brix. I know from research reading that the best milk is 20 Brix. I know you can't put typical 7-10 Brix alfalfa in one end of a cow and expect to get 20 Brix milk out the other end. I know that those who decide to understand Brix will one day have a flash that tells them Brix=Quality AND Brix=Energy. It will be up to them to decide if they want to go one more step and wonder if, possibly, just possibly, Brix energy equals life energy. Regards, Rex Harrill PS: if anybody who wishes to try the method can't find a local winery supply house to pick up a refractometer, they can call Larry Strite in PA USA at 800-659-3325 and buy one for the above price plus shipping. And, I can privately e-mail you a scanned chart if you want to examine the quality ranges you might expect to encounter should you take up testing. Listservers won't pass scanned images through.