Jack Keller’s 2/13/2010 entry called, “When to pull the plug” caught my eye. No, I haven’t developed a moribund fascination with euthanasia but I recently evaluated and discarded five batches of wine and mead. That was over eight gallons that I had high hopes for at one time, and it wasn’t easy to pour it down the drain. Why did I do it? It’s possible to give up too quickly or hang on too long, so it’s an important decision. Let’s look at what Mr Keller has to say about it:

I only pull the plug when a batch has undeniably gone south for eternity. That means a spoilage bacteria has crossed the Rubicon before I knew it existed

I can’t link to this particular post, so you’ll have to click through and search by date and/or title. Like most of his writing, it’s well worth reading the whole thing. Jack is an exceptional winemaker, and this rule might work really well for him. I came to a different conclusion, however, and I think most home winemakers should approach it as a cost-benefit trade off.

Benefit of saving wine

Some problems can be fixed for less time, trouble, and money than starting a new batch. That’s the strongest, most straightforward argument for trying to save a troubled batch. Moving a carboy from the cold basement to a warmer spot upstairs might be all it takes to get a stuck fermentation going again. Some infections can be nipped in the bud by gently floating off a telltale film from the surface, then immediately racking with a higher-than-normal dose of sulfite. If a batch can be saved by simple steps like these, why wouldn’t you? But there’s a gray area in between these easy fixes and the total losses that Jack talks about. The right choice there isn’t obvious, and depends on the specific problem and you own knowledge and resources.

Cost of trying too hard

Some wine and mead will not turn out well enough to justify the work of trying to save them. Every carboy, jug or bottle takes up space. I don’t know about you, but I’m not suffering from too much room for my hobby. Is your back getting stronger and better with age? How about cleaning – is that starting to grow on you? Me neither. We’ll drink better wine with less effort if we can identify and discard the batches that aren’t going to be worth it.

How to balance benefit and cost when evaluating your own wine? Here’s how I did it:

Hard choices and good decisions

I had been keeping an eye on those five batches because I had reasons to think each one might succumb to infection, oxidation, or some other fault. But when I decided to pour them down the drain, it wasn’t for any of the reasons I had been worrying about – I succeeded in saving all five batches. The problem was the taste. None of them tasted bad, or off, or unbalanced. They just didn’t excite me. I forced myself to think about how they stacked up against good budget wine that I’m familiar with. Given the choice, would I rather have a glass of the apple mead or Welch’s wine? The blueberry wine or Fetzer Cabernet? I make my own wine because I enjoy doing it and because I want something different (in a good way) from, or better than, what’s available commercially. I reluctantly decided that these five just didn’t make the cut.

What makes this decision so hard is that you have to make it with incomplete information. Keep good notes so that you know as much about the wine as possible, evaluate the wine as thoroughly as you can (including taste, smell, and visual inspection), then make the call. Take more notes on what you decided and why – like every other aspect of making your own wine, you’ll get better at it.

Because titratable acidity (TA) and pH both measure acidity, they tend to move together. Higher TA usually means lower pH and vice versa. Sometimes that relationship breaks down, and that can drive winemakers and meadmakers crazy.

How are pH and titratable acidity different?

TA and pH are two different ways of measuring how acidic your wine is. Because they each measure acidity in a different way, they tell you about different effects that acid will have on your wine. Without getting into the chemistry, TA tells you how acidity will affect the taste. Does a wine taste tart? That’s high TA your tasting. Too flabby? That would be low TA.

What about pH? It most directly measures how the acidity will affect your wine’s microbial stability. As pH rises above 3.5, microcritters have an easier time taking up residence in your wine. Below 3.5, and the wine becomes much more stable. Cultured wine yeasts have an advantage over many other molds, bacteria, and fungi in that they can thrive as long as the pH remains above 3.0, so keeping fermenting wine at a pH between 3.0 and 3.5 goes a long way towards preventing spoilage.

If pH is too high, you can push it down by adding acid. To low, and you can neutralize acid. TA corrections are similarly straightforward, but what do you do when TA and pH need adjustment in opposite directions? A high pH and high TA can mean a tart wine that is vulnerable to spoilage. Try to fix one problem and you’ll make the other one worse. Low pH and low TA is easier to deal with, but both cases need special handling.

Using sugar to balance a high TA wine

I had a high TA – high pH problem with my cherry wine, and I just recently noticed it in my Merlot. The way I handled it was to leave the acidity alone and address the harsh taste by balancing the wine with sugar. It’s not a perfect solution, but it let me address the tart taste without making the pH even worse. I’ve done some more research since then and have another idea that might work: treat with phosphoric acid to push down the pH.

Using phosphoric acid to lower pH

Adding most any acid will usually push the pH down, but phosphoric acid gives you much more bang for the buck than the acids we normally use (citric, malic, and tartaric). This gives us the ability to lower a wine’s pH with only a negligible impact on it’s TA. Now we can tackle a high TA – high pH wine by first neutralizing enough acid to get the TA where we want it, then adding phosphoric acid to push the pH down. You will have to conduct trials on precisely measured amounts of wine to know how much a given amount of phosphoric acid will move the pH.

You’ll also have to be careful! While this stuff is non toxic, it can be very dangerous to handle. If you’re not qualified to handle corrosive chemicals, then you shouldn’t use this option.

Low TA – low pH in mead

If you run into high TA – high pH, it’s probably in a wine. You’ll see the flip side of that coin in mead. You can tackle that by adding cream of tartar before pitching the yeast and delaying any acid additions until after it has fermented out.

So if the mead is too flabby for your taste, you can improve it by adding acid. To avoid pushing down the pH so much that your yeast can’t ferment, adjust the TA after the mead has fermented to dryness. A low pH won’t matter nearly as much, then, and can keep your mead stable for extended aging.

You can also a teaspoon of potassium bitartrate (cream of tartar) to each gallon of must. This will improve the buffering capacity of the fermenting mead and keep the pH from dropping so much. It’s still a good idea to delay any acid additions until after the yeast have done their work.