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