{"id":173,"date":"2008-02-29T06:00:32","date_gmt":"2008-02-29T13:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/29\/cherry-mead-the-case-of-the-disappearing-acid\/"},"modified":"2008-02-29T06:00:32","modified_gmt":"2008-02-29T13:00:32","slug":"cherry-mead-the-case-of-the-disappearing-acid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/29\/cherry-mead-the-case-of-the-disappearing-acid\/","title":{"rendered":"Cherry Mead: The case of the disappearing acid"},"content":{"rendered":"

I checked the titratable acidity (TA) of my cherry mead the other day, and something didn’t add up. Over six months, three measurements, and two acid additions (totaling 2.6 g\/L) the TA fell<\/em> from 6 to 5.5 g\/L.<\/p>\n

The most obvious explanation is that I goofed up the titrations. As I added more acid, the TA should have risen, so if the first measurement was accurate, then the second was low by 2.1 g\/L (should have read 7.3 instead of 5.2), and the third was low by 3.1 g\/L (should have read 8.6 instead of 5.5). I did three titrations that day using the same procedure, with the same chemicals and with the same equipment. I got “good” results from the other two titrations, and by that I mean consistent with my predictions and with past measurements. So maybe this measurement was accurate and the previous two were off.<\/p>\n

That would mean the first was too high by 3.1 g\/L (should have read 2.9 instead of 6) and the second by 1 g\/L (should have read 4.2 instead of 5.2). A 1 g\/L error on the second measurement is possible, because I’m measuring the sample and the sodium hydroxide with a syringe that I think is accurate to 0.5 ml, and that would mean only one large anomaly. Everyone makes mistakes, and maybe that just wasn’t my day.<\/p>\n

Was the TA really that low? Well, I haven’t got a time machine handy so I can’t redo the test. My wildflower mead, from A Simple Mead Recipe<\/a> fame, had an initial TA of 3.5 g\/L, which isn’t much higher than 2.9, so that fits. Also, that was back when I had started doing titrations, so I might not have had the hang of it yet. I’m chalking this up to one bad measurement – the initial 6 g\/L was really about 3.<\/p>\n

Mystery solved!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I checked the titratable acidity (TA) of my cherry mead the other day, and something didn’t add up. Over six months, three measurements, and two acid additions (totaling 2.6 g\/L) the TA fell from 6 to 5.5 g\/L. The most obvious explanation is that I goofed up the titrations. As I added more acid, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mead","category-measurement-testing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t