Topic: Acid

Sometimes the acidity of your grapes, juice, or wine will need to be adjusted. Learn some of the finer details surrounding how, and when, to make those acid adjustments to your wine.

It seems like you already have the acidity-adjusting situation well in hand — this is often one of the areas in which non-grape wines meet their downfall. As you already have realized,

Raising pH the natural way I am seeking an organic means to raise pH. Any suggestions? Jim Romano Carrollton, Texas The most “organic,” natural way to raise the pH of your wine

I’m not a fan of the pH and TA kits available out there either. pH test strips are pointless as they don’t spit out an actual number and the TA test kits

Bravo for you for doing bench trials! If you’ve read my columns over the years you know that doing bench trials, that is, testing a wine treatment on a small scale (“on

High pH and Low TA in a Chardonnay I have a batch of 2006 Chardonnay that has completed primary and secondary fermentation. It tasted flabby so I had it tested for pH

The better you plan for grapes to come in, the smoother the big day of harvest and crushing grapes will go. Do you have all of the equipment on hand and cleaned? Is the space cleared? Start planning now.

I have to hand it to you for doing such complete analysis on your must. If every winemaker were as conscientious as you are, we’d have fewer stuck fermentations, sluggish malolactic fermentation

First, let’s look at your question about the pH of water. We all learned in high school chemistry that water has a pH of 7.0, which is totally neutral, neither acidic nor

Wine Wizard replies: If you’re looking for a way to boost acid without adding extra sugar, stick to acid blend. Using grape-juice concentrate as an additional fermenting agent in fruit wines, on

Dear Wine Wizard, I raised the TA of the must from 0.5 to 0.6 at the beginning of fermentation for my red wine. Should I still add malolatic bacteria to start MLF

You all seem to have the same problem, so I thought I’d answer you all together. Acid adjustment, or better, achieving the right acid balance, is one of the arts of winemaking.

Sooner or later, most serious winemakers conclude that it isn’t good enough to simply follow a recipe blindly. That’s a bit too much like painting-by-numbers. The expression of one’s own skill and

You might be wondering why someone would want to bother tinkering with must when trying to get the grapes smashed and into the bucket is challenge enough. The short answer is because to make good wine you want to accomplish two things during fermentation: to keep your yeast happy and to exclude other microbes from interfering.