sebring96hbg
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- Apr 22, 2012
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Your confidence should be increased with fresh chemicals and PH buffers for calibration. I don't have any faith in a chart that tells you how long MLF should last based on PH. That said you should invest in some Potassium Acid Phthalate from Piwine.com It will come with a Tech Sheet to guide you in standardizing your NAOH. The nice part of this is two fold. Using it tells you your your NaOH is at its proper strength and second it also allows you to develop a multiplier factor so you can use a weakened solution and still enable you to get a true TA reading. Contrary to your testing, TA results using a weakened solution would indicate a higher TA as it takes more to reach the end point. Which is opposite than what you are reporting. I believe the bump up in TA is a result of the loss of buffering that Potassium in the grape has on TA testing prior to fermentation.
MartyYule,
Thanks. I have been researching posts on old NaOH. I agree getting that reagent is the next step. That's the only way I will know the normality as NaOH weakens over time.
And thanks for pointing out the potassium affect, I spent some time reading up on that.
I will test MLF again in 4 weeks.