BlackBerry and lemon

[The_Dutch]

So today I mixed up a batch of blackberry mead..Recipe:
24 oz frozen (thawed) blackberries
3 lbs clover honey
D47 yeast
Yeast nutrient
Yeast energizer
OG 1.132

So my plan is after 2/3 weeks I’m gonna rack it off the blackberries and then let it finish fermenting. I really want the blackberry to be there so I’m going to rack it onto 12 oz more of blackberries. After it has finished fermenting (id like it to finish around 1.020ish )and then I was going to stabilize and I am contemplating the idea of lemon. It’s going to be fairly sweet so I want the citrus to balance it. I was going to zest one lemon and let it sit for about a week to extract all that. Would this give me the results I am after? Thanks

 

[bernardsmith]

Don't consider myself an expert but I suspect that the key might be less the amount of lemon zest and more about the TA of the mead. If the TA is around 6.5 g/L it should be tart enough. Much below that number and it will taste quite dull and much above it and it may be too tart. That said, the zest contains the essential oils , not acids so this will give your mead a hint of lemon flavor, not citric acid. If the mead needs more acidity then you may want to think about adding the juice of the lemon... I believe that blackberry juice has a relatively high pH and so is not very acidic.

 

[The_Dutch]

Don't consider myself an expert but I suspect that the key might be less the amount of lemon zest and more about the TA of the mead. If the TA is around 6.5 g/L it should be tart enough. Much below that number and it will taste quite dull and much above it and it may be too tart. That said, the zest contains the essential oils , not acids so this will give your mead a hint of lemon flavor, not citric acid. If the mead needs more acidity then you may want to think about adding the juice of the lemon... I believe that blackberry juice has a relatively high pH and so is not very acidic.

So excuse my lack of knowledge but what is TA and how to I test it? The reason I wanted lemon is because I’d like the taste to pair with the blackberry..I guess I wasn’t thinking it to be this scientific

 

[bernardsmith]

So excuse my lack of knowledge but what is TA and how to I test it? The reason I wanted lemon is because I’d like the taste to pair with the blackberry..I guess I wasn’t thinking it to be this scientific

Apologies for the "scientific" nature of this post.
In my opinion wine making is both art and science and the art uses the science. TA is titratable acidity and that refers to the AMOUNT of acid (g/l) in a solution (in this case, the wine). Very different from pH which refers to the STRENGTH of the acid/s in solution. You can have a great deal of a very weak acid or a little of a very strong acid and a little of a weak acid or a lot of a strong acid. Taste doesn't really depend on the strength of an acid as much as it does the amount. But you are not really making a wine with very much acid and if simply adding the zest of a lemon does not add any significant amount of acidity. However, what makes any wine (or any beverage) taste good is the acidity in it that gives it a kick.

You can get inexpensive kits to measure the TA. Basically you get the measurement by adding enough of a chemical base (alkali) to neutralize the amount of acid in a sample of the wine. The amount of base you need to add provides you with a measure of the amount of acid in solution and you know the amount it took to neutralize the acid because you use a color indicator that changes color at precisely the point when the acid is neutralized. A more sophisticated (but easier technique to use) is to use the same alkali but use a pH meter to measure the change in the pH. The pH of the solution when a color indicator changes is always the same and it is 8.2
But there is a third approach to TA which uses an instrument that you are very familiar with and that is your own taste-buds. Taste your wine. If it ain't acidic enough it will taste bland. If it tastes bland then it needs more acidity. If it tastes too tart then it has too much acidity. It is always easier to add more acid than it is to remove any.. but you can reduce the acidity either by blending an overly tart wine with a wine that is insufficiently tart or you can add an alkali like potassium bicarbonate (preferred) or sodium bicarbonate (more easily available but the sodium may leave an undesirable after taste).

 

[The_Dutch]

Apologies for the "scientific" nature of this post.
In my opinion wine making is both art and science and the art uses the science. TA is titratable acidity and that refers to the AMOUNT of acid (g/l) in a solution (in this case, the wine). Very different from pH which refers to the STRENGTH of the acid/s in solution. You can have a great deal of a very weak acid or a little of a very strong acid and a little of a weak acid or a lot of a strong acid. Taste doesn't rally care about the strength of an acid as much as it does about the amount. But you are not really making a wine with very much acid and if simply adding the zest of a lemon does not add any significant amount of acidity. However, what makes any wine (or any beverage) taste good is the acidity in it that gives it a kick.

You can get inexpensive kits to measure the TA. Basically you get the measurement by adding enough of a chemical base (alkali) to neutralize the amount of acid in a sample of the wine. The amount of base you need to add provides you with a measure of the amount of acid in solution and you know the amount it took to neutralize the acid because you use a color indicator that changes color at precisely the point when the acid is neutralized. A more sophisticated (but easier technique to use) is to use the same alkali but use a pH meter to measure the change in the pH. The pH of the solution when a color indicator changes is always the same and it is 8.2
But there is a third approach to TA which uses an instrument that you are very familiar with and that is your own taste-buds. Taste your wine. If it ain't acidic enough it will taste bland. If it tastes bland then it needs more acidity. If it tastes too tart then it has too much acidity. It is always easier to add more acid than it is to remove any.. but you can reduce the acidity either by blending an overly tart wine with a wine that is insufficiently tart or you can add an alkali like potassium bicarbonate (preferred) or sodium bicarbonate (more easily available but the sodium may leave an undesirable after taste).

Thank you for the explanation. I am very new to the wine making game and haven’t really took the plunge into the science of it. Though I will say that it is definitely interesting and I believe I would end up with a better product. I guess my question was more regarding taste and if it would effect the end product by adding zest instead of juice?

 

[bernardsmith]

Others who have made the mead you wish to make are probably far better at answering your question than I am but IMO, adding lemon zest wilol provide your mead with lemony notes but no significant amount of citric acid. Adding lemon juice with the zest (you don't want to add the white pith - that simply adds bitterness which is not the same thing) will add citric acid. Adding the zest of one lemon may or may not be enough if you are making a gallon of mead. But you can always add more zest if after a few weeks the taste is too hidden. Adding lemon juice may warrant what is called "bench testing", and that simply means that you add a known amount of lemon juice to known amounts of samples of the mead you have drawn from the secondary fermenter and you taste each sample to determine which amount gives the sample the right amount of zing. You then divide the total volume of your batch by the sample size and multiply the amount of juice you added by that quotient.

 

[SKBugs]

If I may jump in on this convo, would the taste at that stage of the process be the same as when you open it after bottling? Or, does aging change acid (zing) taste?