Testing acidity in must

[TNFISHRMAN]

I recently purchased a cheap PH meter to test for acidity in wine must. I was curious how ph correlates acid concentration. Can you get the info you need without doing a titration of a wine sample? If so what would I look for when testing Ph.

 

[Hippie]

A low ph indicates high acidity and high ph indicates low acidity. In a must that you plan on finishing sweet, you need more acid and if you plan on a dry wine, you need less. That's about all I know about it except most musts should have a starting ph of between 3.0 and 4.0.


I will bet Joseph knows alot more and hopefully he will chime in.

 

[TNFISHRMAN]

Thanks Hippie! I need all the help I can get on the acidity and PH thing!

 

[Joseph1]

Although acid content and pH are interrelated, they are not the same and there is no direct correlation between the two. The only relationship you can draw between the two is as Hippie indicated: Generally, a low pH indicates high acidity and high pH indicates low acidity.
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When you do a titration, you are measuring the concentration of acid present in the solution. When you measure pH, you are measuring the acid’s strength in the solution. A solution containing a specific quantity of a relatively weaker acid such as malic will have a higher pH than a solution containing the same quantity of a stronger acid such as tartaric.

You really need to measure both the pH and do the acid titration. BTW the pH meter can help with the acid titration, especially with dark colored musts.

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