Brix levels, do they matter? What raises the Brix level? 🔥

Does brix levels in the plant make for better cannabis? This is killing me not knowing the answer. Please weigh in let’s get to the honest truth here…

7 Likes

This sounds like a @shag and company question

3 Likes

I’ll post the video again that made me start this journey

1 Like

@HolyAngel @SeymourGreen @Nitt @Synkra I made a topic to really get to the bottom and discuss it fully here, so we don’t pollute the other thread lol.

4 Likes

This is a super big rabbit hole that I’ve been stuck down for a few years now lol! Most of the discussions about brix on the forums will have my name on it somewhere. Some people say brix and hydroponic/salt based growing is a futile effort but, I talk to people on other forums that grow for a living and achieve this. They just don’t wanna spill the beans completely on the ratios they know produce high brix, hydroponically grown cannabis.

5 Likes

Yeah man I love a good rabbit hole if there’s answers lol… I hate em when I get lost :laughing:
Got me scratching my head losing hair haha

3 Likes

@Nitt. I do use all kinds of bio stimulants, fulvic, humic acids, B1 vitamins, kelp, aloe Vera juice, to name some off the top of my head. I also maintain Si at 18 elemental ppm in my veg mix and drop it completely at week 4 of flower.

3 Likes

Honestly it takes up too much of my time anymore and I’m kind of getting sick of mixing my own salts. Just want to grow great weed as easily as possible without spending ours in my basement mixing batches of nutrients. Been spending a lot of time on the sip and knf threads here lately.

4 Likes

Yeah I know @CrunchBerries knows his sips

3 Likes

I’ve been seeing a lot of evidence about sips being a game changer in organics… apparently if done right can cause almost a hydro type growth speed

5 Likes

Been following his thread from the beginning and just started doing a quick reread of it.

3 Likes

I just got really going here at OG after moving and alot of bs… so I’ll be going through his thread very soon…

3 Likes

I ordered a brix refractometer and will do some testing. I really don’t have any idea right now.

5 Likes

The other question is, where on the plant are you pulling the liquid from to do the brix test? I would imagine where you’re doing it at might affect the content of the result :thinking:

4 Likes

Take a couple of the most mature, newest, fan leaves toward the tops of the plants. Best advice I got on taking brix readings was to ball up the leaves and put them in a beefy garlic press to extract the juices. Getting the right amount of pressure will be trial and error but you only need a drop or two on the refractometer. Spread it around on the lens making sure to get out all the air bubbles. Close the top lens and let it sit for 30 seconds. Look into a light source and see where the blue line is. You want the line to be blurry and fuzzy indicating a good dispersion of elements. A hard blue line usually indicates a deficiency. Usually Ca.

7 Likes

Also, you want to take your readings about six hours after your lights come on. Brix is supposed to drop naturally through the course of the day so, taking a reading later in the day could result in a false low brix reading.

3 Likes

Hmm but we don’t smoke or even use the leaves? :sweat_smile:
I was thinking top it and suck the juices out of the stem :joy:

If this was a tomato or other fruiting plant we’d be measuring the brix level inside the fruit and never the leaves of the fruiting plant :thinking: the leaves will tell us something, but… likely not ever gonna be high numbers that way :thinking:

Wouldn’t it make more sense to do it on the flowers instead? Brix test the rosin? :sweat_smile:

2 Likes

The cultured biologix guy used leaves in a garlic press to get the sap for the refractometer

1 Like

That’s sort of how I had it explained when I learned about it initially. I was first taught brix doesn’t matter with cannabis because we aren’t after a sweeter product, necessarily. With fruits or grapes(wine), higher brix generally means more yield because they’re using the actual sugar as end product. So measuring the amount of sugar within the plant will vary based on a lot. At least that’s what some dude who was hired to teach people told me a few years back. It’s hard to tell where exactly that sugar is headed in cannabis, even though most of the energy is used for buds during flower so you’d think it’d correlate to better or more production. I’m 100% here for this discussion and will be digging around because now after a quick search it seems it’s the bees knees.

5 Likes

I mean, plants make sugar by photosynthesis. So the brix level in the leaves is just gonna show us how well that leaf is photosynthesizing. If there’s not a ton of light or the leaf is shaded, there’s gonna be less sugar content in the leaf. The sugars should be going to the flowers but, idk that for sure :thinking:

5 Likes