Strawberry Wine

[geek]

Turock, as I am learning this curve of adjustments, do you only/just check for PH and adjust up/down to needed level?
In your experience, when you make strawberry wine, does it most of the times need adjustment UP with calcium carbonate?
What do you use to lower the PH? (IF you ever do with fruit wine).

I have a PH55 meter and check my red grape wines only for PH, never adventured into checking acidity.
I know it is important to check acidity specially with fruit wine.
I think there seems to be a relationship (all the times?) where a low PH means a high TA and viceversa.

 

[Turock]

Yes, we don't use TA--it's kind of a ballpark measurement, if you think about it. I want to see the PH because it has such an affect on flavor. In the experiments we've done with PH, while also tasting the result at each measurement, we found that the flavor was much affected by it. That's when we started paying more attention to it and being sure we have acid balance before beginning the ferment.

Yes, strawberry always seems to need adjustment. It starts out too acidic. So we use calcium carbonate to raise the PH. If we need to lower the PH, we use acid blend.

Yep--PH and TA are the reverse, as you said. Remember, PH and TA have no real predictable relationship. All you can say is that a higher TA is associated with lower PH and vice versa. TA is not a measure of total acid, but the acid that's available to react with sodium hydroxide. It doesn't tell you how strong the acid is. Since the proportions of free and bound hydrogen varies greatly according to varietal, ripeness, growing conditions,etc., so does the relationship between PH and TA. So if you want to simplify all this----on fruit wines, just take a PH reading, adjust as needed, and forget it. We've been doing this for MANY years and our wines are nicely balanced.