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Re: How to adjust TA?

I have a few wines going from CA grapes and juice, that I (think) have been

> measured correctly, and are around .55 TA. I want to get the TA around .63 to > .65 but can't find in any of my books how much tartaric (by dry measure) to add > per gallon that would get my level up to where it should be. > > There is some info on my acid test kit about adding 1 tsp (?). of acid blend > per gallon to raise the level by .15%, but I don't want to use Acid blend, I > want to use tartaric only.

MY tartaric acid container says 1 tsp. per gallon for a .12% increase. Jon Iverson's book says the same thing. But it also depends whether the acid is powdered or granulated, since a teaspoon will hold more weight of powdered substance. Best to use a scale and add 3.8 grams of tartaric for each .1% increase. Everyone seems to agree on that figure.

Reply to
Negodki
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Reply to
Bonaquisti

snipped-for-privacy@aol.com (Bonaquisti) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mb-m02.aol.com:

Paul,

I've created a free calculator that can calculate this for you. You can specify all tartaric or any combination of acids you wish. The program defaults to g/L so if you are using percentages be sure to change the TA units option. You can get the calculator from the following page:

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Robert

Reply to
Robert Tyrie

I have this program and have just started using it. In the past I've used a "general" formula that came with my acid test kit, which gave examples of raising the level a certain amount in a batch. They gave 3 examples, using a

23 litre wine up by 0.5g/l, a 19 litre wine up by 1.0g/l and a 4.5 litre wine up by 2.5g/l. Their grams-to-add were all rounded to even numbers like 10g and 25g. So when you did the math, the "multiplier" you came up with was different for each, so when you had to calculate your acid blend to go up a certain amount in your specific volume of wine, you came up with a "range" instead of an amount! When I plugged the examples into Robert's program, I could see their errors, or perhaps their simplifications by rounding to the nearest 0.5g/l and nearest 5g of blend.

Robert, thanks for your email response. I did plug some figures into the program, and adjusted the percentages of different acids, and the resulting g/l were close enough to each other for me.

Reply to
Dan

Reply to
Bonaquisti

A word of caution may be appropriate when making grape wines. (1) Potassium bitartrate precipitates out during fermentation and the TA decreases. (2) Yeast produce succinic acid during fermentation and the TA increases. (3) MLF converts Malic acid (a two proton acid) into lactic acid (a one proton acid) and the TA decreases. Often the increase in TA just about equals the decrease, so the ending TA is about equal to the initial TA. But, this is not always the case. Differences of 1.5 grams per liter between starting and ending TA are sometimes seen, so adjusting the TA of grape juice prior to fermentation is more than just an arithmetic exercise.

lum

Reply to
Lum

---snip

Sweet job Robert.

SG Brix

Reply to
sgbrix

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