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Old 07-15-2022, 08:43 PM
 
14,215 posts, read 11,504,725 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by harry chickpea View Post
Blueberries are a fruit. Depending on how and when they were harvested, storage conditions, etc., the moisture content (and weight) will vary. If you are using them for pies and such, that doesn't much matter, since the water can need to be cooked down anyway. If they are to be used fresh, plump and water filled is nice.

The size of the berries might have some effect on weight, but that shouldn't be a whole lot.
If you have a container filled with large blueberries there will be more empty space between them than if you have tiny blueberries, so it will weigh less. But of course moisture content will make a difference too. If they all look to be about the same size, one package may be older and starting to dry out a little bit, and that will make it lighter.
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Old 07-16-2022, 02:23 PM
 
23,548 posts, read 70,029,022 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by saibot View Post
If you have a container filled with large blueberries there will be more empty space between them than if you have tiny blueberries, so it will weigh less. But of course moisture content will make a difference too. If they all look to be about the same size, one package may be older and starting to dry out a little bit, and that will make it lighter.
Ugh. I was hoping to avoid this. The weight vs. size issue is a LOT more complicated than that. I won't say that you are wrong, but I will say you are sometimes wrong (and sometimes right, if that is any solace).

In math terms, this is a packing or stacking issue. There seems to be agreement that there are no absolute answers in most such problems.

An ideal blueberry is a sphere. Quoting from this page:

https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/q...fit-in-the-box


"The optimal pattern of packing spheres is pretty well known, not as widely known is the fact that this pattern has 7 different orientations where the spheres are all organised in layers of simple patterns. In four of these orientations the spheres are aligned in a triangular pattern, in the three other planes they are aligned in a square pattern. The key to this puzzle is to rotate the pattern so that the wasted space along the sides of the box is minimised."


The exact inner dimensions of the container can affect packing. As an example, if you had a couple giant blueberries that were 3/4 of the size of the dry pint container, only ONE could fit inside. The volume of the sphere of that one blueberry would be less than the total volume of many blueberries a tenth the size packed in the same container.

If the container dimensions are off just enough that optimal packing is impossible of a particular blueberry diameter, the container will be lighter than one that fits the packing. THat can go either way, with larger blueberries winning out, or smaller ones being able to pack better and have more overall mass.

Continuing, if you have ever decanted coffee or flour from a large container to a smaller one, you have seen how you can get much more of those products into the container if you shake or tap it when filling. What you are doing is helping the material into a more optimal packing. The same happens with blueberries. If the packing process doesn't have a shaker, the container will be light.

Then the issue that blueberries are NOT perfect spheres, but varying shapes and sizes (within a certain range) and can have bits of stem and leaves intermixed, throwing "optimal packing" out the window.

The bottom line is that with a dry pint, the weights will vary. When you pick out one, you want to look at the product much more than judge by weight. A pint that is heavy may have smashed berries on the bottom, or there could be mold beginning, or that container may have been recently rinsed with water swelling the cardboard. OTOH, if the container is excessively light, there may be other problems.

As an aside - now you know why professional bakers ALWAYS go by ingredient weight and never by dry measure.

Last edited by harry chickpea; 07-16-2022 at 02:37 PM..
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Old 07-16-2022, 08:02 PM
 
37,315 posts, read 59,585,380 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by riffwraith View Post
As stated, blueberries.




Oh. So, one dry pint of BBerries from one farm is going to yield more BBerries then one dry pint of BBerries from another farm?
The sizes of the blueberries are not uniform—
It is a natural product with variety in berries
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Old 07-17-2022, 11:29 AM
 
Location: Beacon Falls
1,313 posts, read 930,573 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by loves2read View Post
The sizes of the blueberries are not uniform—
It is a natural product with variety in berries
I am not talking about the size of the berries being the issue....
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Old 07-17-2022, 11:42 AM
 
Location: Was Midvalley Oregon; Now Eastside Seattle area
12,999 posts, read 7,382,083 times
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Blueberry varieties have different berry size.
Sometimes processors will screen differentiate blueberries sizes.
Very few processors will differentiate by variety.
Sometimes processors will blend sizes of blueberries or do a fieldrun (unsized) straight into packaging/freezing.
Smaller blueberries will pack will "weigh" more than large blueberries per unit volume.
Larger blueberries are slightly less dense than smaller blueberries.
YBMV
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Old 07-18-2022, 12:06 PM
 
Location: Up on the bluff above the lake
1,248 posts, read 647,649 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RocketDawg View Post
Probably means it's sold by volume (a pint) instead of weight.
This!
When I first saw this post I was thinking a pint of IPA would be a dry pint!
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Old 07-20-2022, 07:59 PM
 
Location: Bloomington IN
8,590 posts, read 12,257,432 times
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Maybe a person sampled a few from the container.
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