Citrus wine Precipitated chalk

[kahless79]

Hi,
I've seen lot of recipes for citrus wine and they all add lot of sugar i order to lower acidity. I understand that it is not possible to just ferment freshly pressed orange juice as it is too acidic hence there will be need for some adjustment, but rather than just dilute the juice and adding sugar I've tried to add quite "a lot" of precipitate chalk to 1 litre of juice. I want to monitor what happens now but I was wondering if anybody could tell me any side effect of what I've done. I couldn't find much info but my worries are:
1) Any health issue due to excessive chalk? Should be a safe product but too much might be toxic? it was a tsp for a litre.
2) Does it affect much the taste?

 

[S-Met]

Sugar does not significantly affect ph. Sugar is fermentable and adds abv. I've fermented fresh lemon juice, you should have no problem with orange provide your yeast us tolerant. I doubt the ph is less than 3, and many yeasts are tolerant of the range.

Though still doesn't answer your question.

 

[RPh_Guy]

"Chalk" is not toxic or harmful in any reasonable quantity. If you ate a handful you might get constipated.

It may affect the taste.
It takes months for it to settle.

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I think the "problem" with orange juice is that it tastes bad when it's fermented. Although, I've seen some people claim to make good wine, so it must be possible.

I found one study showing navel oranges have a TA of around 8 g/L citric acid and pH around 4.0. This doesn't sound any worse than apple juice, grape juice, etc.
MW citric acid: 192g/mol
MW tartaric acid: 150g/mol

 

[kahless79]

Well, I know some wineries in the US make orange wines, and in Spain they make tarongino, which apparently is nice. Well, I'll let everything settle for a long time then all I wanted was to avoid adding water to the juice, but I think I'll need to add sugar or it is very weak

 

[bernardsmith]

Here's the thing: undiluted orange juice - IMO - makes an unpleasant wine. Diluted it is drinkable but I wonder if the folk who make really good drinkable wines from oranges use the zest and not the juice. That is certainly one of my next projects - to make an orange mead using only the zest (the outer layer of the peel). Actually, my plan is to make an orange flavored t'ej in that way.

 

[kahless79]

Actually orange zeist flavoured mead would be great. making a prunes melomel with the excess of my simple mead......if I had this idea before.......

 

[jgmillr1]

Here's the thing: undiluted orange juice - IMO - makes an unpleasant wine.

Agreed. I made a bench trial of blood orange wine this year. Looked and smelled good as it started fermenting. But it ended up with a sort of rubbery nose to it (not H2S) with no notes of citrus or orange. Plus it never settled, regardless of the use of fining agents, time, or temperature. I had to filter it to even evaluate whether it was drinkable. In the end it went down the drain and I learned a lesson of why folks don't make orange wine!