Banana Wine pH too high. Should I adjust or just add a bunch of SO2?

[JLegel]

I tried a banana wine recipe Yooper posted. This is my first attempt at a wine.
I am over 7 months into the process and getting ready to bottle soon. I checked SO2 last time I racked and it was around 40, which seemed OK until I checked pH and it was 4.1! Is this normal for banana wine? I am a bit worried because charts I am looking at only go up to 4.0 for pH and show I would need >120 ppm of SO2 for a white wine. I don't want to add that much SO2 if it is going to ruin the taste or smell. Are the guidelines different for banana wine? Should I try to add more acid blend to bring down pH or is it too late in process for that?
This wine is supposed to peak in 2 years, so it needs to be able to age. Any advice...?

 

[jgmillr1]

I'm sure Yooper will chime in with her experience on what is a typical pH for that recipe.

Has your pH meter been recently calibrated? You don't want to make additions to your wine unless you are confident you are accurately monitoring the issue you are trying to solve.

Where is the TA currently for your batch? Any acid adjustments will definitely affect the TA.

If the pH is indeed 4.1, I suggest you bring it down with the acid blend or citric. It will oxidize rapidly (if it hasn't already) if you leave it at 4.1. Sulfites are nearly ineffective above a pH of 4 or you would have to add so much that it would make a very noticeable impact to your wine aroma.

I light white wines to be no more than 3.5. Take a 1L sample and measure in what it takes to get to 3.5. Taste it and be sure you like the way it tastes. (Note that you may have to plan on additional back-sweetening depending on how much the TA increases and your personal tastes.) When you are happy with the final blend, then scale up the acid addition to the rest of your wine. Be sure to re-dose with additional sulfites.

 

[JLegel]

I was worried about the pH meter as well. Cheap meter and my calibration solution is an old mixed solution stored in a tupperware. I ordered new calibration solution to check it against. I don't have ability to measure AT currently.

 

[hamiltonkiler]

Lemon juice and take another reading.

 

[JLegel]

@Yooper , any input? Thanks!

 

[Yooper]

@Yooper , any input? Thanks!

That's high- I would expect it to be more like 3.5-3.6 or so. If you followed the recipe, I am guessing that your meter is off. @jgmillr1 has great advice, and that's what I would do. How does the wine taste? Often a wine without enough acidity will taste "flabby" or boring.

 

[JLegel]

I am not much of a wine person, so I am unsure how to describe. Color looks good. Does not taste bad to me. I taste banana and alcohol, but does not taste 'crisp' to me, for lack of a better word, like a dry white wine. I ordered new calibration solution to check meter against. Will check and take another reading. Sounds like if the pH was really this high for months, there would be noticeable oxidation, like a color change or obvious off taste. Also ordered tartaric acid, in case I need to adjust. If I do need to adjust, should I shoot for the expected 3.6 or make a smaller adjustment to maybe 3.8? Just enough to make amount of SO2 I add more reasonable? I am thinking .5 pH is a big swing, but dont know if it can cause problems to add that much acid. It would be like 19 grams to a gallon. Also, no way for me to test TA, which @jgmillr1 mentioned, but that much acid would raise it by 5 g/L.

Also, I used the remaining dregs after I racked when I measured pH, which included some lees which I tried to filter out with a coffee filter. Does that matter?

If calibration solution proves the meter is completely unreliable, I guess I will just ignore pH and assume it is in your normal range for the recipe, maybe a little extra SO2, like 60, just in case. I will update after I re-test.

 

[JLegel]

Calibrated with new 4.0 solution. Wine still testing 4.0. Wondering if maybe I misread recipe and did 1/4 tsp acid blend instead of 1 and 1/4 tsp. No idea why I am so far off.

 

[JLegel]

Will hitting it with 19 grams of tartaric acid now to get to 3.6 cause problems? If I need to sweeten after, what should I use? Wine conditioner product with sorbate?

 

[JLegel]

I used an online calculator to determine how much acid to bring it down to 3.6. I dissolved that in water and added that and added sulfite again to bring to 50 ppm. Stirred and let it sit for a while and then took pH again and now it is at 3.3, which is not at all what I expected but at least not in a dangerous range. Guess I should have tried with half that much first...
Tastes like white wine now but with very little banana, where before the banana was right up front. Not sure if I will back sweeten at bottling. Maybe I'll try with a small sample to see...

Thanks, @Yooper and @jgmillr1.

 

[So Shay]

I'm sure Yooper will chime in with her experience on what is a typical pH for that recipe.

Has your pH meter been recently calibrated? You don't want to make additions to your wine unless you are confident you are accurately monitoring the issue you are trying to solve.

Where is the TA currently for your batch? Any acid adjustments will definitely affect the TA.

If the pH is indeed 4.1, I suggest you bring it down with the acid blend or citric. It will oxidize rapidly (if it hasn't already) if you leave it at 4.1. Sulfites are nearly ineffective above a pH of 4 or you would have to add so much that it would make a very noticeable impact to your wine aroma.

I light white wines to be no more than 3.5. Take a 1L sample and measure in what it takes to get to 3.5. Taste it and be sure you like the way it tastes. (Note that you may have to plan on additional back-sweetening depending on how much the TA increases and your personal tastes.) When you are happy with the final blend, then scale up the acid addition to the rest of your wine. Be sure to re-dose with additional sulfites.

I'm trying to understand ph, water being 7 has a higher number but lemon a lower number ph does this mean you want a higher number to increase ph and an acheive a lower number to decrease ph? I've been thinking the opposite, that it is a higher ph at a lower number but am I getting acid and ph mixed?

 

[jgmillr1]

The pH value is the negative logarithm of hydogren ion concentration. So a pH of 7 means the concentration of H+ is 10^-7 or 0.0000001 moles per liter. However a pH of 3 has a concentration of 10^-3 or 0.001 moles per liter. So you can see that the pH of 3 is 10,000 times more concentrated than a pH of 7. Hope this helps.