Ok guys, here is my story. I did publish an article on alcohol determination in wine in April/May WineMaker Mag. It was based on tables and equations published by well known and respected authors in wine making. There was very little that was original in the article. What prompted the article was that I found that I could explain what appeared to be differences in the predictions by the different authors and could show that the apparently different tables were different realizations of the same relationship.
Fred has brought the basic assumptions of the artcle under question -- namely that the original authors knew what they were talking about. I will leave it to him to explain his objections.
I cannot defend the tables and data published by the original authors. I do not have thier original data. I can only say that my paper was based on well accepted, long standing publications and references were given. If Fred wishes to queston thier work I wish he would publish references where he shows that well respected authors counter the refferences I used or that he publish raw data that discredits the tables that were published by the original authors. If he cannot, the original authors work must stand as valid. Silence is not an arguement.
Yes there are numerous different published meathods of calculating alcohol level and some of them give very different results. I simply found that I could relate some of them to each other. I do not say that the calculation I suggest is better or worse than any of the others. I simply removed the discrpancy between some of them. When I can show that seveal seemingly differing meathods based on different assumptions are actually the same it gives me a sence of confidence; but, which you use is up to you.
Frankly, I believe that the only way to clear this up is to find original raw data that supports one meathod of the other. Lum has provided some data that does not support the equations I used. Pp has provided some that seems to support the data I used but are not ideal for the job. Pp also suggested some second hand data that suggests that the equations might be acceptable but this is not very valuable other than to point where I might find supporting evidence. Of course, it can simply be said that "no serious student of winemaking" would accept the data that supports the approach I used but I cannot fight that kind of arguement. If the data is measured and is there it can be accepted.
Sorry for the diatribe
Ray