PH or TA ?

[vernsgal]

reading a lot of posts I see some put the importance on PH and others on TA.
In making fruit wines is one more important than the other, if so why? And can you balance both? from what I've read you can almost always throw one off trying to balance the other

 

[robie]

When one of them goes up, the other goes down and vice-versa.

High pH wines are more susceptible to bacterial infection.

It is the TA that you taste.

The idea is to get the TA taste where you like it without letting the pH get too high. It is definitely a balancing act.

 

[Deezil]

Which one is more important, depends on who you ask.
Ask Robie said, they're tied together and either one being too far out of whack can make a wine seem off.. There are 'happy mediums' to be found though

 

[Turock]

You should always know the PH of your wine because that is how you know the amount of SO2 needed for it.

I think PH is very important on fruit wines otherwise you're going to have wines that can be too acidic and you could never balance the acids with sweetening.

 

[vernsgal]

Lol Turock, I new you were a PH man. I just thought I'd see if someone had a reason that the TA was more important.
Basically though, if I have my PH it doesn't matter what my TA is? Should I take them both anyway?

 

[Turock]

Well-------if you WANT to take the TA I will never tell you that you are wrong. We used to do it, many years ago. Then we started using a PH meter and we actually found no use for TA on fruit.

We ran some experiments and found that when we got the PH in range, the wine tasted better. We started making such better wines, once we got our PH under control, that we said to ourselves, "why mess around anymore---why screw with success?"

I think that as you get more experienced as a winemaker, you'll make that determination for yourself. If you want to take both---no problem. You do what YOU want to do.