Measuring Acidity of fruit wines

[Stigmond13]

I ve made a variety of fruit wines over the last couple of years from fruit grown at my allotment or foraged. My tastes are fairly simple and I tend to like what I make but I have never thought about testing acidity levels before so surely there is room for improvement! Does anyone out there have any practical tips on how to measure acidity and how to adjust if necessary? Many thanks in advance!

 

[bernardsmith]

IMO, the only real measure of acidity worth measuring is pH and that is useful to measure for the appropriate additions of K-meta. You would add K-meta to inhibit oxidation and the amount of K-meta recommended is based on the level of acidity (pH).
The acidity that many wine makers invoke (TA) titratable acidity (often called "total acidity") refers to the strength of the kind of acids typically found in the fruit (grapes, have tartaric, apples have malic, for example). Now you CAN measure TA by titration but it seems to me that taste is the best method of measuring the TA. In other words, when you taste the wine you are making and it tastes too bitter than you may want to reduce the TA and if tastes too flat then you may want to add more acid, even if the TA was apparently "spot on".
(pH is a measure of the amount of acid in the wine. TA is a measure of the strength of the acid: think - how much steel is in the bolt and how strong the steel in that bolt is)

 

[Yooper]

I disagree- aside from extremes, pH doesn't really matter unless you're using it to verify the TA.

What does matter is the TA (acidity). There are cheap and easy titration kits to determine that, and here is a website with some guidelines and "how tos" that I like: http://www.grapestompers.com/articles/measure_acidity.htm