Acid and ph testing

[lednugenna]

I havent spent too much timeing thinking on this but now I am wondering if I should be testing acid or ph. What worries me is that from what I have read it looks like these tests use colors or shades of color to read. Is that right? I am colorblind and I know from past experience with testing sugar for diabetics at my job that I can not read those tests. Are there any tests that do not use colors? I am really confused and would like to know what is what. Thanks
Anne

 

[masta]

Anne,


If you purchase a pH meter you can test the pH and acid even if you are colorblind.


The pH test is obvious as long as the meter has been calibrated with the proper standards.


Joesph posted these instructions a while back on how to test TA usinga pH meter:



"If you are going to get a pH meter, you can place the Acidometer on the shelf with the other little used equipment. First put your sample in a 50ml beaker and take your pH reading (the meter must be calibrated first). Then to determine acidity, slowly add sodium hydroxide (using burette, pipette or syringe), stirring as you add, until you have a pH reading of 8.2. The titratable acidity of your sample can thenbe determined with the following formula:<?amespace prefix = o ns = "urnchemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><?:NAMESPACE PREFIX = O /><O></O>
<O></O>
TA = 75 * V * C/VS<O></O>
<O></O>
Where:<O></O>
<O></O>
V = volume of sodium hydroxide needed to obtain a pH of 8.2<O></O>
C = concentration of sodium hydroxide used (0.1 normal or 0.2 normal)<O></O>
S = volume of the sample of wine or must<O></O>
<O></O>
For example: you have a 15ml sample of wine and add 12ml of 0.1 normal sodium hydroxide solution to reach a pH of 8.2.<O></O>
<O></O>
TA = 75 * 12 * (0.1 / 15)<O></O>
TA = 6.0<O></O>
<O></O>
The acidity of the sample is 6 grams per liter (6 parts per thousand or 0.60%). Note that this formula will also work if you use Phenolphthalein indicator solution since the color change occurs at pH 8.2
<O></O>
Play with the formula to adjust the sample and the concentration of sodium hydroxide solution. For example; if you use a 15ml sample and the concentration of sodium hydroxide is 0.2 normal, each ml of sodium hydroxide added translates into one gram per liter (0.1 %) of titratable acid.<O></O>
<O></O>
Make sure the sodium hydroxide solution is fresh. It has a limited shelf life and begins to deteriorate once the bottle is opened. Buy the smallest bottle possible. Buy in bulk only if you plan to do a lot of testing in a short period of time. The alternative is to add to your lab and standardize the sodium hydroxide solution before using it in your test."<O></O>

 

[rshosted]

Good question Anne,

Actually if you buy a PH meter it is a digital readout so no worries there.

As for the acid test that I am familiar with, it does require one to watch until a 'color change' occures. You would essentially have to tell from a dark red to blue. It may not be something you would be able to tell. Though, I wonder if you could distinguish between the shades in order to tell. It's not like you have to konw the difference between red or green, you just have to be able to tell when a color is no longer getting darker.

I would be willing to gamble that you could do it, even being color blind. Heck, my girlfriend is always telling me the neighbors green car is actually blue. But what does she know!

 

[lednugenna]

Good question Anne,

Actually if you buy a PH meter it is a digital readout so no worries there.

As for the acid test that I am familiar with, it does require one to watch until a 'color change' occures. You would essentially have to tell from a dark red to blue. It may not be something you would be able to tell. Though, I wonder if you could distinguish between the shades in order to tell. It's not like you have to konw the difference between red or green, you just have to be able to tell when a color is no longer getting darker.

I would be willing to gamble that you could do it, even being color blind. Heck, my girlfriend is always telling me the neighbors green car is actually blue. But what does she know!

sounds like you might have a color deficiency yourself actually telling if a color is getting darker would be hard or impossible for me. So the test goes from drak red to blue? The only colors that I do not have a problem with are bright primary colors. I cant tell if the light on my monitor has changed from red to green or yellow. Only recently did my hubby explain to me that there were three colors and I just thought it the light was on the monitor was on. Oh, well. At least when boys are colorblind it is just kind of accepted but not so for girls. i did not know I was colorblind until I was 20 years old. I just thought I was kind of stupid.

Back to the question... it looks like I would have to buy a meter if I wan to test ph. Not in the budget right now. Maybe I can get hubby to do some testing ?

Thanks for the info.


Edited by: lednugenna

 

[grapeman]

So the test goes from drak red to blue?

Sorry Anne,
I'm as bad as the others making typos on these boards, but this one was too funny to ignore. I suspect drak red is like a blood red in reference to the Count(Dracula).

Seriously what types of wine are you making now? If they are kits, don't worry about acid testing anyway. You really only need to try to test acid for fruit wines from fresh juice or concentrate. Even then if you buy juices from some distributors, they test the juice at packaging.

 

[lednugenna]

lol, if that is my only spelling error in the post i am doing well.

I am not making kits yet. My wines are all country wines from scratch. I would like to do some kits but I really can not handle containers bigger than 1 gallon. In fact I am still trying to recover from racking 5 gallons last week. I have health problems so I have to take it slow and recover after episodes of working at anything.

Would it work out ok if I did a 5 gallon kit and then transfered to 1 gallon jugs? I can't imagine why it wouldnt be ok. I still havent finished washing all of the jugs I got at the recycling center. I think I have about 10 more to clean and I dont see being able to do that any time soon.. I not sure why I started thinking about acid and ph except that I was worried about the color aspect.

I have going :
3 gallons banana pineapple
3 gallons organic Concord
2 gallons Cherry
1 gallon Grapefruit