Good question.
It depends on the wine. For a Chardonnay you'll drink in the next year or so, I might skip it, or go with a half dose. If it was a heavy red that might hang around for 5 years? I'd add the full dose of K-meta.
If you add up all of your potassium metabisulphite additions "every three months" in multiples of 1/4 tsp doses what is the volume of wine in US or Imperial gallons that you have dosed so far? That answer is necessary to answer your question properly. Finally, what is the colour of your chardonnay right now e.g. lemon-yellow, yellow, yellow-green, yellow-gold or gold right now?
Four 1/4 tsps. in a five gallon carboy that holds a little more than five gallons to the neck.
US or Imperial gallons i.e. 25 or 30 bottle carboy? If its 25 bottles you've added 1 tsp in total. 1/8 tsp adds 50 ppm sulphite per 6 bottle Imperial gallon or 10 ppm per 5 Imperial gallons. Adding 1 tsp gives you 80 ppm total sulphite per 5 Imperial gallons. A good rule of thumb is that 1/3 of total sulphite is free sulphite i.e. 27 ppm in your case for 5 Imperial gallons and 03/25*27 = 32 ppm for 5 US gallons. Your wine is either perfectly (Imperial) or slightly over (US) sulphited.
I yield about 26 bottles. US gallon.
When I racked from six gallon to five, I had some wine left over so I bottled it. This was three months ago. The bottle is from a Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio and has a slight green tint to the glass.
You should havre about 30/26*27 = 31 ppm free sulphite. The colour is what I would expect at ~31 free sulphite. This tells me that your sulphite is close to perfect as long as you leave the wine alone for awhile so it can drop in the bottle e.g. to ~25 in 3 months and maybe 20 in 6 months. Don't add any more sulphite. The colour tells me that you've nailed it. Congratulations.
Thank you for your kind words.
So I took a ph reading and it came up high. 3.73. I started to have second thoughts about pushing in the corks. The wine is in bottles with no corks yet. The only chemical I have in my drawer is an acid blend. Malik, citric and tartaric. Not sure if this blend will lower ph but if it would, how much should I add to each bottle. I would hate to have to dump the wine to make a correction. As you may well see I need an answer fairly quickly. I guess another option is to drink the wine quickly.
what does it taste like as is?So I took a ph reading and it came up high. 3.73. I started to have second thoughts about pushing in the corks. The wine is in bottles with no corks yet. The only chemical I have in my drawer is an acid blend. Malik, citric and tartaric. Not sure if this blend will lower ph but if it would, how much should I add to each bottle. I would hate to have to dump the wine to make a correction. As you may well see I need an answer fairly quickly. I guess another option is to drink the wine quickly.
My wife flipped over it. To me it tasted ok
If I dumped to a bucket would the acid blend do the trick?
more detail e.g. why does she like it. why you say ok?
Ok. Tasting again. To me it’s fruity, warm going down but not as dry as I would like. Wife agrees with two out of three. She thinks it is crisp and plenty dry.
Useful reply. OK here you go 1) bottle 1/3 to 1/2 of it as hers i.e. put her name on the label e.g. Ellen's Chardonnay 2) take your part and start adding citric acid (or acid blend) 1/4 tsp at a time per gallon until you like it. If you overshoot the acid on 1 gallon you can dilute it with the un-acidified gallon. Forget about measuring pH while you do this. Focus on the taste in your mouth. When you're done adding acid to match your palate you can measure pH. The advantage of citric acid is twofold 1) it will give you a more interesting complex smell as the wine ages 2) it won't precipitate like tartaric acid might in the presence of potassium in the wine as it ages and/or cools. If it is "fruity" now then your wine has promise. It might be a bit high in alcohol like an Australian Chardonnay "warm going down" but if you get the acid level to where you like the flavour then your wine should age well and improve a lot over time e.g. at least a few years. It sounds like you have something decent if you get acid where your palate likes it. Your tongue is more useful than a pH meter right now. You can bottle it as soon as you're done with adding acid.
Good advice
