Acid blend and tannin

[Victorthenazarene]

are these truly needed? What are natural alternatives to both?

 

[Johnd]

It depends. What are you making?

 

[Rice_Guy]

You are adding acid/tannin to bring fruit wines up to a level where red grape is.

are these truly needed? What are natural alternatives to both?

* acid you need some for flavor (TA of .5 to .8) and as a preservative (pH less than 3.5). If you add a strong acid as phosphoric it doesn’t take a lot. A natural way is to blend a high acid (cranberry, rhurbarb, red sumach, real lemon, etc) with a lower acid as water. note Many fruits have a good acid level and we are compensating for the water in the recipe.
* tannin adds depth of flavor and acts as an antioxidant. Try crab apple, strong black tea, red grape skins, , , ie bitter flavor notes as a bitter sharp cider apple. No you do not have to have it in a county wine, if it is obvious it is probably over done in which case you need to balance acid and sweet.

 

[wildhair]

The correct amount of acidity is what give a wine a "balanced" taste. Acid blend is blend of citric, tartaric and malic acid. Too much acid and the wine is tart and sour. Too little and it's flat, flabby and dull. Tannin acts as a preservative and is made from grape tannin - a natural ingredient also found in the bark of trees and black tea.
Alternatives - use lemon or lime juice to increase acidity (citric). Use strong black tea in place of tannin.

Not all wines needs it and some fruits need more than others. Grape wine made with grapes skins may have enough tannin naturally. And if the grape is somehow perfectly balanced in acidity - you might not need to add any acid.

That's why you test ph and Total Acidity (TA) in the must and when the wine is cleared or nearly cleared. Additions of acid (or reduction by using calcium carbonate) will give that "right" flavor & finish.

I have a recipe book from the Depression era - my neighbor didn't use any "additions" to his wine. He used fruit, water, sugar and just let God decide which yeast would ferment it. Hell, he didn't even wait for it to clear.

 

[Victorthenazarene]

It depends. What are you making?

Right now one apple batch and one banana batch

 

[Victorthenazarene]

The correct amount of acidity is what give a wine a "balanced" taste. Acid blend is blend of citric, tartaric and malic acid. Too much acid and the wine is tart and sour. Too little and it's flat, flabby and dull. Tannin acts as a preservative and is made from grape tannin - a natural ingredient also found in the bark of trees and black tea.
Alternatives - use lemon or lime juice to increase acidity (citric). Use strong black tea in place of tannin.

Not all wines needs it and some fruits need more than others. Grape wine made with grapes skins may have enough tannin naturally. And if the grape is somehow perfectly balanced in acidity - you might not need to add any acid.

That's why you test ph and Total Acidity (TA) in the must and when the wine is cleared or nearly cleared. Additions of acid (or reduction by using calcium carbonate) will give that "right" flavor & finish.

I have a recipe book from the Depression era - my neighbor didn't use any "additions" to his wine. He used fruit, water, sugar and just let God decide which yeast would ferment it. Hell, he didn't even wait for it to clear.

How do you measure the amount of black tea needed?

 

[wildhair]

The old recipes I've looked at have called for a "cup of strong tea" -= per gallon, I believe. How strong is "strong"? Not sure. Most of these old "recipes" were not exactly science. It was based on the knowledge and experience of the winemaker and what he/she had on hand.

I posted a copy of my old neighbors wine recipes a while back - if you're interested in how they did in in 1935, have a peek.
https://www.winemakingtalk.com/threads/old-memories-notes-from-the-past-return.67721/

 

[Rice_Guy]

How do you measure the amount of black tea needed?

There isn’t a home based test for tannin. We are stuck with tasting different ratios as in bench trials. You will find that after fermentation when the sugars are consumed the tannic flavors are stronger so it is better to go low. An observation tasting crab apple varieties is that about 20% have an interesting or useful tannic flavor. Expect variation in level in natural ingredients.

You can increase the strength/bitterness of tea by heating for a few minutes. As a bench trial you could try a finished fruit wine or white grape wine with several percentages.
Last thought is you can always add more but you can’t easily remove too much. You are limited to disguise it with sugar or acid.

 

[BernardSmith]

If you use loose leaf tea (rather than a US teabag) - black of course, not herbal. and you boil the tea rather than add boiling water to the tea then you extract more of the tannins. But as Rice_Guy suggests: how much acidity to add? How much tannin? Your tongue will tell you. Banana may have more than enough tannin if you are adding peel to the must and the peel is not over-ripe. As for apple, dessert apples (the apples you buy in the supermarket for eating) are not very acidic. Apples grown for hard cider tend to be far more sour and some varieties you would not want to eat. Apples GROWN for cooking (I have not seen any in the USA but growing up in Britain we bought cooking apples - and they were not good for eating - and these would be far more acidic than dessert apples. Apple juice that you buy - whether filtered or not is made, typically, from dessert apples unless your source is a good apple orchard where they may make juice from true cider apples and eating apples..