You know instinctively when you bite into a peak-of-season peach that you’ve hit the sweetness jackpot. But did you know that growers and scientists use an approachable, informative system that can actually quantify the sweetness in each peach?
Grocers talk about fruit having a certain number of Brix (often simplified to °Bx). Technically, each number—or degree—stands for a percentage of sugar by mass, usually measured in grams. The higher the number, the more sugar there is in the fruit. When measuring Brix levels, we rely on a 200-year-old scientific method that tells us how much dissolved sugar is in a fruit’s natural juices (or in soda or wine—but for now, we’ll stick to peach juice). While farmers once had to rely on complex equations in order to calculate the sweetness of their fruits, today, growers and grocers use tools called refractometers, which look at how light travels through a fruit’s juices. It’s as easy as depositing a few drops of juice onto a prism and reading the resulting number in a viewfinder or on a digital screen.
Dino, our produce coordinator, uses a refractometer to read the Brix levels of our store's peach selection.Growers track the Brix of their fruit in the orchard. The closer a peach is to being perfectly ripe, the higher its Brix number. (A Brix level of 12 or 13 usually indicates a juicy, flavorful, aromatic, ripe peach.) Some orchards pick peaches before they’re ripe so they’re less likely to get bruised during travel, but their fruit never reaches peak sweetness.
Metropolitan Market’s Peach-O-Rama is a highly anticipated annual celebration where we bring in the most perfect fruit available. Every single day of the season, we measure and post Brix levels for each of the peach varieties we carry. While other stores’ peaches tend to score a Brix of 8-10, our peaches can measure all the way up to 18 degrees Brix! The posted Brix number tells you you’re taking home the best-quality peaches available, at the height of their sweetness and flavor—and we can actually prove it.
Peach-O-Rama is a beloved seasonal tradition that we’ve been celebrating each summer for nearly three decades, and it just doesn’t feel like summer until Puget Sound’s favorite peaches arrive on our shelves. Check out the varieties of peaches we have in store for you!