Recent content by doughowe

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Hi Calamity and Greg, Ah..right! It's been too long since I did TA on recently fermented wine vs. unfermented must. I forgot about the carbonic acid issue. Makes sense since the D21 batch has basically finished primary fermentation and so may have less CO2 in it now, and hence less...

Hi All, I recently obtained 15 gallons of frozen syrah. These were thawed, mixed thoroughly together, then split into 2 7.5 gallon batches. Before pitching the pH was ~3.4 and the TA (determined by NaOH titration to pH 8.2) was ~ 0.65. One pail got Lalvin ICV-D21 and the other got Lalvin...

I believe sulfamic acid can hydrolyze in aqueous solutions to ammonium bisulfate. I don't know the rate at which that may occur. The ammonium bisulfate may still be acidic enough for our purposes that this change wouldn't really matter. The sulfamic acid solid is stable. I weight out 1 gram...

Hi Chrisjw, I didn't do the test the way you describe it, though it would be a good one to do at some point. I'm out of phosphoric currently. I had a wine sample I was testing though, and it was reading out at 8ppm, which was low. To do a positive control for the 2% sulfamic I repeated the...

Hi, Thought I would report final results I've had with sulfamic acid in place of 25% phosphoric. I noticed that the rate of color change in the peroxide solution was a bit slower than what I was used to when using phosphoric acid. So, I've upped it to 2% w/v sulfamic acid and it works...

Hi All. I just finished testing using sulfamic acid in place of phosphoric in my AO tests. I got sulfamic acid as a powder in the tile section at Home Depot. So far a 1% w/v solution used in place of the 25% phosphoric acid seemed to work fine, and no foaming or other issues from additives in...

Hi All, When my super tuscan kit finished primary ferment, I tested the pH and SO2 (before adding any). The pH taken with a calibrated digital Hannah pH meter was 2.8 and the SO2 tested out at ~38ppm? Wow...low pH and SO2 without me adding any? I speculated that RJS and other kit makers...

ahh..thanks Cracked! My pinot gris has 0.5% residual sugar, so it's basically dry and had a pretty accurate read in the vinometer I think. The blueberry is about 4% sugar and the blackberry is around 1% residual sugar. So maybe the lack of dryness in the fruit wines is the major culprit...

Hi All, I recently got a vinometer to estimate percent alcohol in finished wines. Yesterday I was bottling 3 wines: pinot gris, a blackberry, and a blueberry. According to my starting specific gravity readings, the pinot gris (no sugar added) should have been around 12%, the blackberry...

Thanks Deezil, I tried the pectinase and it worked like a charm. My last minor concern now is that I will be reintroducing some protein to the heat stable wine with this juice which could lead to a protein haze down the road. Think that's a valid concern? I could hit my sweet reserve with...

I've got 9 gallons of Pinot Gris that is almost ready for bottling. Before fermenting I set aside some settled juice to sweeten with. I figure I need to add about 750ml of juice to my 9 gallons of wine. How can I clarify the juice so I don't cloud up my nice clear wine? Maybe I should have...

Hi all, I decided to add a bit more yeast nutrient and give the blueberry wine a stir. That appears to have helped the fermentation rate to some degree. The bubble rate in my air lock for the past few days has been about 4x faster than it was before nutrient addition. SG seems to still be...

Hi all, I've got blackberry wine that appears to have finished primary fermentation after a couple of weeks. It has a SG of 0.997. Despite that, I'm getting quite a bit of bubbling in my air lock. I'm thinking this may be a natural malolactic fermentation going on? If so, is this a bad...

Thanks for the input all. Currently the wine is already under an air lock, and the fermentation rate seems to be going steadily, so I think I'll wait on adding nutrients. I suspect the benzoate (I thought it was sorbate?) from the blueberries. I'm just used to the grape wine method of adding...