PH Depending on Fruit

Plato · Apr 2, 2015

Good morning all. I have been looking across the site for all the excellent posts and power points on understanding PH and /or acid. I looked at the following links below. If you have not seen them then please do. Both are super helpful and I thank the Authors. I was wondering if anyone had or knew of a chart that showed what fruits should run on the PH/acidity scale when making wine with them. Or is there just a rule of thumb that all fruits or wines need to be at? Im sure the information is already out here and I'm sure I'm over looking it but a slight nudge will be greatly appreciated. Also anyone have a specific acid testing kit they prefer?

http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/f71/how-understand-ph-take-reading-11240/

http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/f65/acid-ph-so2-power-point-4915/

Plato · Apr 2, 2015

Also I saw in the PDf where a PH of 3-4 is common. just wanted a specific per fruit.

ibglowin · Apr 2, 2015

pH (and acid for that matter) is dependent on many factors including variety, soil, weather/growing temps.

Plato · Apr 2, 2015

Gotcha, so then the ph of 3-4 across the board with most country fruit wines is the best bet then?

wineforfun · Apr 2, 2015

Also, I noticed there are acid testers out there specifically for tartaric, or just for malic, etc.
Is one recommended over the other or is there an all-encompassing one?

ibglowin · Apr 2, 2015

The cheap TA Test kits measure both/all acids (Titratable Acidity). You get a more accurate number using a pH meter to read the endpoint.

wineforfun · Apr 2, 2015

ibglowin said:
The cheap TA Test kits measure both/all acids (Titratable Acidity). You get a more accurate number using a pH meter to read the endpoint.

Ok, so maybe I am confused(as usual). I bought a Milwaukee pH 56 meter. So are you saying I don't need an acid test kit, just to use my pH meter? And if so, I assume by paying attention to the pH or is there another test I should be running with it for the acid?

ibglowin · Apr 2, 2015

No, you do need to test TA. The TA kits are cheap and they come with everything you need to test for TA using a color change for endpoint detection. The pH meter allows you to detect endpoint with the meter which is much more accurate. pH and TA are not the same thing.

sour_grapes · Apr 2, 2015

wineforfun said:
Ok, so maybe I am confused(as usual). I bought a Milwaukee pH 56 meter. So are you saying I don't need an acid test kit, just to use my pH meter? And if so, I assume by paying attention to the pH or is there another test I should be running with it for the acid?

Let me also try to explain it. You take a sample of your wine, and you slowly add a base (i.e., alkaline) solution (which comes in the cheap TA kit) to the sample. This raises the pH of the sample. You add enough of this solution until you raise your pH up to a certain value. (I believe the value is 8.2, but not 100% sure.) Then, the amount of base solution that you had to add to reach this value tells you what your TA (titratable acidity) is.

(This name comes from the fact that the process of adding this base solution is called titration.)

wineforfun · Apr 2, 2015

Thanks guys.
I know pH and TA are different, I thought I was reading where the TA could be calculated using a pH meter.
I will get a TA kit to go along with the pH meter.

I guess my next question is, is there a chart or formula of how much tartaric acid to add to lower the pH by "x" amount?

sour_grapes · Apr 2, 2015

wineforfun said:
Thanks guys.
I know pH and TA are different, I thought I was reading where the TA could be calculated using a pH meter.
I will get a TA kit to go along with the pH meter.

I guess my next question is, is there a chart or formula of how much tartaric acid to add to lower the pH by "x" amount?

No, there is not. Just as in the example above, you do not know ahead of time how much base to add to raise the pH to 8.2, neither in this case do you know how much acid to add to decrease the pH by a certain amount.

Chemists say that different solutions have different buffering capacities. That is, different solutions require different amounts of acid to change pH by a certain amount.

Here is an analogy: Say that you have control of a reservoir, that is, you can let in the water from a stream, or you can open the gates of the dam to let the water out. If you do not know the topography of the valley that the reservoir is in, you cannot know how much the water level will rise (or fall) as you let a certain amount of water in (or out). If the valley is narrow and its walls are steep, then the water will rise a lot for a given amount of water you let in. If the valley is broad and its walls are quite shallow, it takes a larger volume of water to cause the water level to rise by that amount. The former case has a small buffering capacity, and the latter case has a large buffering capacity.

Turock · Apr 2, 2015

Well, I'm gonna go against the grain here and make this real simple. We make ALOT of fruit wine every year from many different fruits. We ignore TA and go with PH and all of our fruit wines fall into a PH of 3.3 or 3.4. Still, we bench test as we're adjusting the acid and go with what tastes good to us as everyone seems to have different tolerances for how much acid bite they like. It doesn't need to be harder than that for fruit wines.

wineforfun · Apr 2, 2015

haha
I really like Turock's advice and that is what I was hoping to find...........a simple solution using my pH meter.

I do follow, and can appreciate your analogy though Paul. Makes perfect sense.

SBWs · Apr 3, 2015

How to test acid with a pH meter from my BLOG.

I wrote this awhile back, most of the time I do what Turock does except I try and get my pH a little higher at 3.5 to start, and then add acid later if needed, which I very seldom do.

Wine Making Calculator for figuring out how much acid or calcium carb to add. Be careful when using this type of calculator, I always add half and the recheck.

brottman · Apr 7, 2015

Turock, do you adjust pre or post fermentation?

Plato · Apr 8, 2015

This all is super helpful information. thanks

Plato · Apr 8, 2015

Turock said:
Well, I'm gonna go against the grain here and make this real simple. We make ALOT of fruit wine every year from many different fruits. We ignore TA and go with PH and all of our fruit wines fall into a PH of 3.3 or 3.4. Still, we bench test as we're adjusting the acid and go with what tastes good to us as everyone seems to have different tolerances for how much acid bite they like. It doesn't need to be harder than that for fruit wines.

Turock this pretty much answers my question also. can you think of any fruits to be aware of that TA should be looked into or any fruit other than graoes can follow your above method? I also just do fruit wines. For now waahhahhahaha

Turock · Apr 9, 2015

We like to adjust all our musts pre-ferment. There's nothing I hate more than having to go back and work on wines in the post ferment. It's a lot more added time. Also, things like added tannin, enzymes, etc. give a nicer result when done at the fermentation than sometimes waiting to do them afterward. It all gets incorporated better.

There are no fruits where we look at TA. I'm not saying that just looking at PH is preferable to looking at TA. But doing PH only when working with fruit works really well for us--26 years now. Everyone loves our fruit wines--so their testimony is probably good proof that going the easy route works pretty well. I don't like making things harder than they need to be. So maybe give it a try and you be the judge if just looking at PH is the way you want to go.

Just a word on calculators. We never use things like that. We just deal with whatever the must is and what the weather that year has given us. I'm not criticizing the use of such things, just saying that it CAN be a mistake to get totally hung up on numbers and formulas. You cannot substitute critical thinking for a chart.

PH Depending on Fruit

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