Ph for Dummies

I make one gallon batches of assorted fruits and juice wines, country wines. I make only whites, so far. My biggest problem is this Ph thing. I know NOTHING about Ph. Everything I read may as well be in Chinese. Is there a simple explanation and device for it? I don't want a kicked up hi-priced gadget, or a kicked up explanation. Any help?

OK,

PH....

There is a lot to PH, but for the sake of keeping it simple....

Your wine is made up of fruit juice that contains a variety of acids. PH measures the strength of all of the acids in your wine on a scale from 0 to 7.

The PH scale sets 100% acid as 0, and having no acid as 7.

So, the lower the acid, the HIGHER the PH.

You can go with PH test strips that are not very accurate, but probably close enough for you. This is more or less litmus paper.

Correction: The pH range is 0-14 --- from acid to alkaline.

Measuring pH is very easy with a pH meter. You can find them for about $40 for a pen-style digital meter.

Yes,

My thinking is that all winemakers are using PH meters to measure acid strength. For testing acid the range is 0 to 7 (where 7 has no acid at all).

Once PH is over 7, you are measuring alkali.

I just wanted to keep this explanation simple as the OP requests.

yanks4carolyn said:

I make one gallon batches of assorted fruits and juice wines, country wines. I make only whites, so far. My biggest problem is this Ph thing. I know NOTHING about Ph. Everything I read may as well be in Chinese. Is there a simple explanation and device for it? I don't want a kicked up hi-priced gadget, or a kicked up explanation. Any help?

Click to expand...

You say that the pH thing is your biggest problem.. but in what way is the pH a "problem". I make ciders and meads and fruit wines and rarely measure the pH and when I do it is really only to check to make sure that the TA (the total acidity) before I bottle is within the range I am looking for IF I need to add more acidity to the wine to improve its mouthfeel. (pH is a measure of the STRENGTH of the acids in the wine. TA is a measure of the AMOUNT of the acids in the wine.. You could have a tiny amount of a very strong acid or a huge amount of a very weak acid and you could have a huge amount of a very strong acid or very little of a very weak acid - so measuring the pH does not tell you a great deal. It IS useful if you are making hundreds of gallons of a wine and you need to know how much K-meta to add to inhibit oxidation but if you are simply adding a Campden tablet every two or three months /gallon of wine then IMO, there really is no need to determine the pH.. You are going to be in the ballpark..

If fermentation stalls then I might want to measure the pH to make certain that that is not where the problem lies (too much acidity can whack the yeast), but I have had my wine stall only once or twice and that was because there was some sorbate in the juice I was using...

Bernard my biggest problem is that I knew zero about it, why I needed to test it, when, and what for. Like I said, zero. I know a bit more now, thanks to y'all who gave input.

The best option for you is to get an acid test kit. This measures acid by weight. They are cheap, simple to use, and will also tell you how much acid you should add.

for fruit wines, you want to have Around 0.7 Grams per liter..

JohnT...where do I get an acid test kit?

Plenty of sites on the internet. You can also see if there is a local win/homebrew supply store. It is pretty easy to find.