Comments on my Zin and Merlot numbers

Holy smoke, that's 33° Brix! No wonder you have pH problems with it.

If that were my must I'd get the pH down to 3.5 - 3.6 or so (be sure to taste it while doing this). Never mind the TA. The excess will drop out as bitartrate later on in the cellaring - especially if you chill it.

FWIW, the other 3 are already wine - not must.

Tom S

Do you mean 1.090?

I made an error... the others are 1.090

Yes I did!!!!

I adjusted the Zin to add .1 TA. My new numbers are TA .76 pH 3.51

I am out of acid.... I am going to try to get more tommorow for the Merlot.

Time's a wastin'! You want to get that in there ASAP.

Tom S

Ok, but use tartaric only if all you want to do is swing pH. Now that they have started fermenting you may want to remeasure; my acids always seem to rise a bit post fermentation. just boil the juice sample for a few seconds prior to reading to drive off the CO2. The right way to do it is to pull a 50 ml sample, heat to 180-212 F for several seconds; cool and add distilled water to make up any volume lost. CO2 affects both pH and TA.

My central valley Merlot from grapes was high too, 1.107 and a TA of

Joe

My wines are almost dry... I should have pressed on Wed... but now they will wait till Sat. I pulled my samples, boiled them for a few seconds then chilled them to room temp.

Merlot pH 3.68 SG 1.010 TA .73

Z> I have 4 buckets of merlot with 4.5gal in them All crushed from 6 cases