Oregano Wine Recipe: pH restored

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I’ve been stirring my oregano wine every day since I used potassium bicarbonate to raise the pH. Yesterday I took some measurements, and I found some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I succeeded in raising the pH to 3.67, and that’s high enough to permit fermentation. The bad news is that it hasn’t actually started fermenting again. It’s a waiting game for now, but if I don’t see activity in the next few days I’ll add more yeast.



Tomato Wine: Early thoughts on red wine varietals

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I’m waiting to see how my white tomato wine turns out before trying a red, so I haven’t been thinking about which varietals to try. Until yesterday. That’s when I noticed a photo of some beautiful bite-sized tomatoes that, if they were darker, would be just the thing for a red tomato wine. The photo is from this article by Molly Day about her garden. After some advice from Molly and some internet searching, I came up with a short list of promising tomatoes for red wine:

Black Russian
Black Cherry
Brown Berry

At this point, all I know is that they’re small and darker than most tomatoes. So now I’ve got some research to do, and I’ll revisit this topic when I know more.



Cherry Mead Recipe: Pressed

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Homemade 3-bucket press, set on a wooden table and wooden blocks, drains into a 5-gallon carboyI didn’t intend to leave the cherry mead on the skins for three weeks, but there are other wines to fuss over, meadmaking questions to ponder, and even unfermentable things that a winemaker must attend to. Yesterday I poured the mead, skins, pits, pulp and all, into my homemade 3-bucket press. A bucket drilled with holes, making it look like an oversized colander, holds the fruit. It fits inside another bucket which catches the wine and drains it through a spigot and tubing into a 5-gallon carboy. A third bucket, filled with water, fits into the one holding the fruit and squeezes out the wine. Not the most efficient press, but you can’t beat the price!

Oregano Wine Recipe: restarting a stuck fermentation

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I tested a sample of my oregano wine yesterday. The specific gravity is 1.053 and the pH is 2.62. These results are virtually unchanged from 7/13/07 when I first noticed the pH crash that stopped the yeast in their tracks. I’ll try to get them going again by neutralizing some of the acid, raising the pH, with potassium bicarbonate (KHCO3). I had planned on adding two teaspoons because I wanted to add about 10 grams, and I believed that one teaspoon was 4.8 grams. The vendor, Crosby & Baker, says that 1 teaspoon is about 6 grams and warns against using more than 10-13 grams per gallon. That would put two teaspoons, at about 12 grams, very close to the upper limit, and since measuring spoons are not precise I decided to only add one teaspoon this time. I’ll see if fermentation restarts and I’ll retest the pH.

I’ve also decided to add one teaspoon of cream of tartar. The reaction of KHCO3 with tartaric acid will create cream of tartar. By adding some more, I’m seeding the wine and that will encourage the newly created stuff to precipitate out more easily. I’m also hoping it will improve the buffering capacity of the wine.

Rhubarb Wine: Largest harvest ever

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Rhubarb on an analog kitchen scale with the needle at 20oz/550g.


The 20 oz (550 grams) that I pulled in today was my biggest haul ever, and puts my total for this year at 3 lb 3 oz (about 1425 grams). I’ve always had my last harvest in August, and if I can manage 2 oz more than last year’s 15 oz (about 425 grams), then I’ll have matched last year’s total of 4 lb (about 1800 grams) despite a slow start. It looks like I’ll have enough rhubarb for a gallon of rhubarb wine.

Acidity In Mead: The problem

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Adjusting acidity is critical

Acidity can make or break a mead. Too much and you will have a harsh undrinkable mead, but too little will leave your mead flabby and unpleasant. Winemakers deal with this by measuring the acidity of there wine or must and adjusting it according to the type of wine they are making. These two steps, measurement and adjustment, are fairly straightforward in making wine, but can be problematic when making mead.

But you can’t adjust what you can’t measure

A winemaker measures the acidity of his wine (or must) by titration. That is, neutralizing a wine’s acid with a strong base. By carefully measuring the amount of wine and the amount of base needed to neutralize the acid, he can determine how much acid there was to start with. Inexpensive kits are widely available just for this purpose. The peculiar chemistry of honey (and therefore mead) skews the results of such testing. The dominant acid in mead, gluconic acid, can be titrated just like any other acid. The problem comes from a substance that is related to gluconic acid called gluconolactone. As the pH rises, the gluconolactone actually changes into gluconic acid, so when you titrate a sample of mead, you will be adding base until all the gluconic acid and gluconolactone is neutralized. Since you had to use “too much” base to titrate the sample, your calculations will overstate the amount of acid. So meadmakers aren’t able to make this simple measurement that winemakers take for granted.

And you can’t adjust if you don’t know the right end point

Even if it were possible to accurately measure, there’s no clear cut specification for the right amount of acid in mead. Here again, winemakers have it easy. They can consult well established guidelines for the amount of acid in different styles of wine. The long history of winemaking and extensive research have produced a consensus that just doesn’t exist for mead. Some meadmakers insist that mead is better au naturale, with no additional acid. Others try to imitate the acid profile of (usually white) wine. I’ve made mead without adding acid, and I don’t care for it. I’ve enjoyed meads made like a white wine, and I think that makes them a good starting point. I’m not convinced that the different chemistries of wine and mead would lead to exactly the same acid requirements though.

Ok, now what?

This uncertainty about the right amount of acid and the difficulty in measuring it represents a unique problem for meadmakers. One way to deal with it is to pass the buck and use an established recipe. Popular recipes that have stood the test of time, and are well liked by a lot of people, must have dealt with acidity, even if only by accident. Rules of thumb are another solution. I have found that 1 tsp of acid blend, or tartaric acid, per gallon of mead (about 1.3 g/L) often gives good results. You may have heard that you should “adjust to taste,” and I have given this advice myself. It doesn’t really tell you very much, though, does it? Should you keep adding until a mead stops tasting flabby? That would certainly improve it. Should you add acid until it’s profile reminds you of a white wine? You can get good results that way.

None of these approaches are very satisfying to me. I’ve been puzzling over this problem for a while, trying to come up with a more precise method. Well, at least a less imprecise one. I’ll have more to say about this when I’ve organized my thoughts a little better.

Oregano Wine Recipe: fixing the pH crash

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I’ve been thinking about the pH drop that brought fermentation to a near halt, and I’ve decided to deacidify with potassium bicarbonate (KHCO3). Most of the information I could find on neutralizing acid has to do with reducing the total acidity (TA); I couldn’t find anything about deliberately raising the pH. That means I have no clear guide in deciding how much KHCO3 to add. When I last measured the TA, it was 6 g/L. I’ve arbitrarily decided to neutralize half of it. To reduce the acidity by 1 g/L, you need to add 0.9 g/L of KHCO3. Since I’ve got a gallon (3.785 L) of wine and I want to neutralize 3 g/L of acidity, I need to add 10.2 g KHCO3 (0.9 * 3.785 * 3). I haven’t got a scale accurate enough to measure out 10.2 grams of anything, but a teaspoon of KHCO3 is about 4.8 g so adding two teaspoons (about 9.6 g) gets me pretty darn close to 10.2 g.

So what happens when I add the KHCO3? It combines with the tartaric acid to form potassium bitartrate (cream of tartar), carbon dioxide, and water. The cream of tartar precipitates out and the CO2 bubbles off leaving a tiny bit of water. That should leave the wine with a high enough pH to kick start the fermentation. I’ve ordered the KHCO3, it will arrive in a few days, and then we’ll see if there’s method to my madness.

Most of the info on neutralizing acid came from Philip Jackisch’s Modern Winemaking. It’s a good book that provides technical detail on winemaking processes with examples. It’s for the winemaker looking to go beyond the basics, and I highly recommend it. There’s even has a chapter on non-grape wines!

Summer Heat And Water Stress

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I wrote before that watering my bonsai vineyard can be tricky. Too much water reduces the quality of the fruit and can delay dormancy. All plant life needs water, however, and too little can harm the vine. If you’re growing grape vines in pots, none of the local knowledge about climate, soil, and irrigation apply. All the research, that growers have access to, wont help you. I had been watering once a week, and keeping an eye out for water stress. Well, yesterday I found it. The one and only cluster on my Swenson Red is shriveled, dry, and dead. Maybe I just don’t have a good eye yet, but I didn’t see any signs of trouble; the leaves and tendrils looked fine. The other vines look to be in good shape, but I took this as a warning and I now intend to water twice a week. I learned something about my bonsai orchard too.

I had been treating the fruit trees, I also grow them in pots, just like the grape vines. I’m still curious about how some viticultural techniques; like leaf pulling, cluster thinning, and withholding water during fruit maturity; might apply to other fruit that’s being grown for wine. My fruit trees haven’t been doing well on the strict watering regimen, though, so even if they can benefit from the ways of grape growers, I’ll have to be careful to give them enough water.

Oregano Wine Recipe: pH crash

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pH meter, in champaign glass about one quarter full of oregano wine, shows a pH of 2.69.My oregano wine has been fermenting very slowly, and I suspected a pH problem. I was following a recipe that called for 3 tsp of acid blend. I decided to add only 1 tsp at the beginning, because I was afraid the pH could drop so low that it would inhibit the yeast. The must was mainly sugar and water, so there wasn’t much to buffer it – a little acid could push the pH a long way. Yeast has a difficult time when the pH drops below 3. I decided to take a sample and do some measurements. The pH meter, reading 2.69, confirmed my suspicion. The specific gravity was 1.052, which is less than the 1.060 on 6/30/07. That means it’s still fermenting, but it’s been over a month and it’s still got a long way to go. I measured the TA as 6 g/L (tartaric). I’m not sure what to do about this yet. I might be able to rack it and let it ferment out slowly under an airlock. I could try and neutralize some of the acid, pushing up the pH, to get fermentation going again.


Update 7/25/2007 – Fixing the pH crash by neutralizing acid

To fix the pH crash, I neutralized some of the acid with potassium bicarbonate (KHCO3). This will raise the pH and should get things going again

Calibrating A pH Meter

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pH meter, in a champagne glass about a quarter full of 6.86 buffered solution, reads a pH of 6.17 at 31.4 Celsius.To work properly, a pH meter must be calibrated. You do this by preparing (or buying) buffered solutions of known pH and testing the meter against them. My meter uses a two point calibration. It works by immersing the meter in the first buffer solution (pH 6.86 in this case) then reading the pH and temperature values.

You turn a calibration screw until the meter shows the correct pH for the given temperature (the bottle of buffer solution has a table of temperature and pH values). The pH of the “6.86” buffer solution that I’m using is 6.85 at 30 Celsius, the closest temperature on the correction table to 31.4, so I turned the calibration screw to 6.85. That’s the first “point” of the two point calibration process. The second step is exactly the same but with a different buffer solution (ph 4).

I’ll use my new toy – um, important scientific instrument – along with my simple acid titration kit to analyze my oregano wine. Fermentation has been very slow and I’m afraid the pH of the wine has fallen so low that it’s inhibiting the yeast.