How to drop acid? The tartaric kind of course...

I have about 35 gallons of various types of grape wine that have been aging for 3 or 9 months and have been told that dropping the temperature to ~28 degrees F for two weeks to get the tartaric acid to drop out.

Now this would require putting the batches outside and possibly having them freeze since the weather is quite finicky and i cant always just them in if to move them in when the weather decides to change.

That's really the way to do it. You don't want them to freeze, but dropping the temperature is the standard way to get "wine diamonds" to drop out and that lowers the acidity quite a lot. Even dropping the temperature 10 degrees from what it is now may be enough to do it, but maybe not.

Cold stabilization makes a huge difference in the wine, and is highly recommended. Do you have an old fridge or a place that you can store the wine colder without freezing?

I put mine in the crawl space under my house, it gets cold enough to drop the wine diamonds but never freezes because the insulation keeps the temp pretty constant down there.

MmmmBeer said:

I have about 35 gallons of various types of grape wine that have been aging for 3 or 9 months and have been told that dropping the temperature to ~28 degrees F for two weeks to get the tartaric acid to drop out.

Now this would require putting the batches outside and possibly having them freeze since the weather is quite finicky and i cant always just them in if to move them in when the weather decides to change.

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I had my 5 gallon carboys outside, next to the house in a covered porch. Even when it was in the teens for several days, it didn't freeze due to the alcohol and radiant heat from the house.

My garage is detached and they currently reside in my basement at ~50-55 degrees, I dont have an old fridge large enough to hold a carboy.

I was looking for confirmation that it was worth the possible hassle to try to get the wine diamonds. Thank you for the information.

Once I get it to a temperature where I see wine diamonds, how long should I try to keep it there? I was told a couple of weeks and I doubt the weather will cooperate for that long.

Also after dropping the acid out does this improve the longevity of the wine without using sulfites?

Thanks again for the help and information!

MmmmBeer said:

My garage is detached and they currently reside in my basement at ~50-55 degrees, I dont have an old fridge large enough to hold a carboy.

I was looking for confirmation that it was worth the possible hassle to try to get the wine diamonds. Thank you for the information.

Once I get it to a temperature where I see wine diamonds, how long should I try to keep it there? I was told a couple of weeks and I doubt the weather will cooperate for that long.

Also after dropping the acid out does this improve the longevity of the wine without using sulfites?

Thanks again for the help and information!

Click to expand...

I don't know how long it would take to get out all the wine diamonds- in my experience it's been more like months instead of weeks but that's maybe not so for everyone.

Cold stabilization does great things for wine- reducing acidity and smoothing out the wine. But I've never heard that it would take the place of using sulfites properly.

Thanks Yooper! I will be getting a kegerator some time to do cold stabilization because I don't want to take the chance on ruining a batch of wine even though it is pretty unlikely.

So I have decided to finally buy a chest freezer to make a keezer since now I need it for chilling wine.

Should I try to do all of my degassing before or after I do my chilling to ~28 degrees for two weeks?

Preferably I would like to degas after racking off the diamonds when the chilling is done but not sure if the excess amount of CO2 can inhibit the diamonds at all. Although it might decrease the possible freezing temp since more solubles in a solution drop freezing points of mixture in general but suspect that might not affect the precipitation of diamonds.

Just want to make sure I do everything I can to produce something better than a typical table wine, thanks again for all the help!