I have the hardest time with the acid titration kit as far as finding the right color stop (acid level) any suggestions on using an acid testing kit, how to tell when to stop at the right level.

Manuel Q. – NM
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Hello Manuel.

For those of you who have never used an acid test kit: basically what you are doing is taking a measured sample of wine and slowly adding sodium hydroxide to it until the wine permanently changes color. By knowing how much sodium hydroxide it took to get the color change, you can determine you wine’s acidity level.

An acid test kit can be a little awkward to use until you get the hang of it. I sometimes suggest to customers that they practice on some finished wine, first, before they actually need to use it. Here are some additional information for using an acid test kit. These are tips that go beyond the instructions you typically find with a titration kit.

1. Run Through A Quick Test
   When I’m using the acid test kit, the first thing I like to do is go through a test quickly. This is to establish “about” where the color change will occur. Then when doing a second test, I start off by adding enough sodium hydroxide to get close to the point of a color change. Then I add the sodium hydroxide one drop at a time. Adding the bulk of the sodium hydroxide all at once will save you a lot of time and aggravation in the long-run. With each drop you will want to shake the test-tube and see that either a magenta or grey color is dissolving completely away in the sample of wine. Streaks of either color are okay. They just need to be swirled out. It’s when the color stays permanently and alters the color of the entire sample. That’s when you want to take your measurement reading.

2. Use A White Background 
   This tip for using an acid test kit is the one I think is the one that is most helpful. By holding the test tube up to a white background like a wall or sheet of paper you will be able to discern the color change more easily. You are essentially blocking out colors from the room, giving you a cleaner frame of reference when taking a titration of the wine.

3. Use A Second Wine Sample For Comparison  
   Having a second test tube with another wine sample for comparison may be helpful. Put them side-by-side. Expect the color of the sample being tested to get lighter and lighter as more sodium hydroxide is added. That’s okay. You are not comparing the lightness or the darkness between the two wine samples. You are comparing the color hue of the two wine samples. 

4. Dilute The Wine’s Color  
   This tip for using an acid test kit does not apply to every wine. If the color of the wine is too opaque to see a color change, you can dilute it. Some red wines are just to dark for performing a titration. You can dilute it with distilled water. You do not want to use tap water or drinking water. Use distilled water, only. Dilute as much as you need to. This will not alter at what point the color change will occur or the math you use to calculate it. 

5. Make Sure The Wine Is Free Of CO2   
   The wine sample needs to be flat. You do not want CO2 (carbonation) from the fermentation to be in the wine sample. Carbon dioxide will throw off your reading. For this reason, the most opportune times to test your wine is before fermentation and before bottling. The wine must should be free of CO2 at both these times. If you are making your wine from fresh fruit, I would recommend testing at both times. The acidity level can change during a fermentation. The first test is to get the acidity close so that the fermentation can be healthy. Acidity plays a role in how well a yeast ferment. The test before bottling is to adjust for flavor – flat vs. tart flavors.

6. Make Sure The Acid Test Kit Is Still Good   
   Here is the last tip for using an acid test kit. Both the activator and the reagent in your acid test kit will get old with time. This can throw off a titration reading – sometimes significantly. For this reason, it is not a bad idea to store these ingredients in the refrigerator for longer shelf-life. If you are not sure how old your acid test kit is, you can run a test on Welch’s grape juice – not from concentrate, straight Welch’s grape juice off the store shelf. It should have a reading of .67%-tartaric. If you get a reading that is higher than this, it means that your reagent (sodium hydroxide) is old and does not have its full strength.

Using an acid test kit is a great way for controlling your wine’s acidity. Hopefully these tips for using the acid test kit will help to make the process a little easier and an little more accurate.

Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus

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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

Could you tell me how I might control my fermentation temperature? I have been making wine for 15 or so years from real grapes. Many times the wine’s fermentation temperature is too high. What is the best way to control it. Thanks in advance.

Name: Al J.
State: NY
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Hello Al,

Thanks for the great question. This is something that plagues a lot of home winemakers, so I’m glad you brought it up.

For those of you who do not know, a fermentation creates heat. It’s usually not a problem during the cooler months or with smaller batches, say 5 gallons or less. But when the weather is hot or you are fermenting in 15 gallon batches or larger, heat can build up and should be on the winemaker’s radar.

Depending on the type of wine you are making and the type of wine yeast you are using, you would like your fermentation to around 70° to 75° F.  Once you start getting over 80°F. you run the risk of off-flavors and possible spoilage.

There are several ways you can go about keeping a fermentation cool. Unfortunately, most of them are a pain in the behind. For a professional winery it simple. They use fermentation vats with cooling jackets and/or refrigeration coils that keep the temperature stable under computerized control. Sweet! But for us home winemakers we have to use a little more ingenuity to keep our fermentation temperatures stable.

I’ll go through a few of the basic methods you can use if the wine fermentation temperature is too high, but it’s going to be up to you to figure out which one is going to be most practical for your situation:

• Use Smaller Fermenters
  This one is pretty basic. A 5 gallon carboy is not going to over-heat as easily as a 15 gallon demijohn. This is because you have more external surface area per gallon as you go down in size. That means the heat can dissipate more readily from a smaller fermenter than it can with a larger fermenter.

• Blocks Of Ice
  This is the one I hate the most, but is most used by home winemakers. It’s simply using blocks of ice in ziplock bags directly into the wine. I hate this for two distinct reasons: 1) you never know when a ziplock bag is going to fail and empty melted ice into the wine, 2) there is very little control. While it’s designed to help you out when the wine fermentation temperature is too high, you could easily get the fermentation too cool, stalling the fermentation. For these reasons I do not recommend this method, but it could be used in a pinch.

• Evaporation Method
  The basis behind this method is when water evaporates it cools whatever it is touching. By keeping evaporating water against the outside of the fermenter, you can get the fermenter to cool down. A common way of accomplishing this is to sit the fermenter in a bath of water. It does not need to be deep, just a few inches. Next put fabric over the fermenter that drapes into the water. As an example, you could use a cotton t-shirt over a carboy. The water will then wick up the fabric and then evaporates, cooling the fermenter. You an use a fan to blow air across the fermenter to speed up the evaporation. The faster the evaporation, the more the fermentation gets cooled.

• Heat Ex-changer
  This method is done simply by putting a coil of stainless steel tubing in the wine and then running cold water through the tube. This is a great way to cool the wine. The biggest problem with it is that you have to use stainless steel tubing which is expensive. Other metals will corrode which is detrimental to the wine, so stay away from copper, aluminum, etc.

• Dedicated Refrigerator
  This is the ultimate solution for when a wine fermentation temperature is too high. This method involves using a refrigerator as a temperature controlling device. The obvious issue with this method is you need a refrigerator. The second issue is that the thermostat of a refrigerator does not go high enough. For this reason you will need to buy a electronic temperature controller with the correct temperature range to control the power to the refrigerator.

Unfortunately, all these methods involve some effort on your part. As mentioned before, all them work, it’s more a matter of picking out the method that is most practical for your situation.

Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

I have started making 5 gal of Blackberry wine and I am using your ingredients. One question is in your wine recipe you say after the first day add the yeast with the fermentation bag still in the must and leave it for an additional 7 days before transferring it to the carboy. Should I continue to stir the wine also ? Do I need to add make up water after removing the bag ?

Name: Charles P.
State: SC
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Hello Charles,

Once you add the yeast you will want to stir the fermenting wine must around as much as you can. The goal is to not allow any of the pulp to become too dry during the fermentation. Stirring it around once or twice a day should be sufficient.

In a winery they call this punching the cap. When fermenting grapes there is so much pulp involved that a thick solid cap is formed. The winemaker has to punch it down with a punch down tool that looks similar to a large potato masher with a long handle.

With your fermentation there is much less pulp. I’m assuming you used around 15 pounds of blackberries to make your five gallons, whereas with a grape wine there would be about 40 pounds, so simply stirring the fermenting wine should be sufficient in your situation.

If you have our regular size fermentation bag, just open it up and stir the pulp so as to circulate the dryer pulp towards the bottom. Rotate the pulp. If you have our jumbo fermentation bag, then it should be left open and rolled backwards over the brim of your primary fermenter. All you need to do is give the pulp a quick stir in kind of a folding manner.

The reason you want to keep stirring the wine must is twofold. The first one is simple. When the pulp becomes to too dry for too long of a period, it provides a perfect place for mold an bacteria to grow – damp, nutritious pulp that is exposed to air. The second reason is if a solid dry layer forms it will interfere with the fermentation. Wine yeast needs air to successfully grow and multiply into a large enough colony to support a healthy, vigorous fermentation. If a dried cap forms it creates a barrier that traps the CO2 gas in the wine must and cuts the air off from the yeast.

As you suggested, once your primary fermentation is done and you are ready to remove the fermentation bag, there will be some loss in volume, but it will not be as much as you might think with your blackberries. What you are looking at now is the plump fruit. Once the fermentation gets hold of it, it won’t be so plump. The fermentation will break down the pectin in the blackberries making the pulp just a shell of what it was before.

If you do find your batch is excessively short then you should top up the wine when going into secondary, but is should not be a major issue. Just be sure to get as much liquid as possible when racking into your secondary fermenter — even if some sediment is coming along with it. Also, when you pull the fermentation bag out, wring it as best you can. The more juice the merrier.

Charles, I hope this answers your questions about stirring fermenting wine. Just remember that stirring the wine must daily to keeping any cap from becoming hard and dried is a critical part of having a healthy, active fermentation.

Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

I recently entered a homemade blackberry wine into a judging contest. I did ok but two judges said my wine needed more fruit flavor. I used the wine recipe from Kraus. Do I need to add more fruit at the beginning of the fermentation? How do I get more fruit flavor in my wine? I usually make 5 gallons at a time.

Name: Thomas S.
State: Tennessee
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Hello Thomas,

Thanks for the great question! Flavor is a subjective topic. One person’s perception of a wine can be completely different from another’s. In fact, two of the tips I’m going to give you to make fruit wine with more fruit flavor (number 2 and 3) are based on perception and not reality:

• Tip #1: Use more fruit – just as you suggested. This will also require you to add less acid blend than called for in the wine recipe. The reason for this is that more fruit acid is being provided by the fruit. An acid test kit may be the best way for you to tell how much acid blend is needed. The additional fruit will also provide more sugar to the wine must. You will want to use a hydrometer to know how much to add. This brings us to the next tip for getting more fruit flavor in your wine.

• Tip #2: Make your wines with less alcohol. Lower alcohol wines tend to have more fruit flavor. High-alcohol wines numb the tongue, making flavor sensations tougher to experience. This wine can take on a watered-down characteristic. Instead of making your wines at 13%, 14%, or higher, try making them around 10% or 11%. Controlling your wine’s alcohol level is easily done by adding less sugar to the wine must. Again, a hydrometer is your friend in this situation. Add sugar to the wine must until the hydrometer gives you a potential alcohol reading in the 10% to 11% range.

• Tip #3: Back-sweeten the wine at bottling time. Don’t make your wine bone dry. When you pop a blackberry into your mouth, a lot of what makes a blackberry taste like a blackberry is its sweetness. The fermentation takes all that sweetness away by fermenting the sugars into alcohol. Sweetening the wine back just a little bit can give the perception of the wine having more fruit flavor. You don’t necessarily have to make the wine sweet. Use just enough sugar to take the bone-dry edge off the wine can make quite a difference. It is important that you stabilize the wine by adding potassium sorbate when sweetening. This will help to eliminate any chance of a re-fermentation in the bottle.

There are a couple of caveats that need to be brought up.

1. Adding more fruit to increase the wines fruit flavor means that it will need more time to age. Bigger, bolder wines are harsher when they are first fermented. Aging plays a more important role in mellowing the harshness of these big wines.

2. There is a limit to how much you can increase the fruit in a wine recipe. The limit is based on the acidity or tartness of the particular fruit being used. You do not want to add so much fruit that the wine ends up being too tart even without adding any acid blend, at all.

So Thomas, there you have it… three simple things you can do to get more fruit flavor into your homemade fruit wines. You can try just one of them, or you can try all three at the same time, on the same wine.

Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

Just started a blueberry wine. Ran the berries through a blender instead of crushing them (lazy I guess). I did not add Campden tablets to it in the beginning, not sure if this is a problem. There is a pulp crust forming on top right now, I stir this each day, should I remove it after 5 or 6 days before I transfer the wine to a carboy?

Name: Lee P.
State: TN
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Hello Lee,

The fact that you did not add Campden tablets before the fermentation is probably not going to be a problem in this case.

The big issue here is that fact that you are using a blender to crush your wine making fruit. What this typically does is cause the resulting wine to be bitter. The over chopping and destroy of the pulp and seeds releases too much tannin into the wine. In turn, the wine will have a lower pH from excessive tannic acid, giving it an unpleasant, bitter-dry, puckering taste.

For future reference, you only want to crush the fruit. Using a blender is way overkill. You only need to make sure that the outer structure of the fruit has been busted in some way. This is something that can quickly be done by hand when dealing with 10 lb. or 15 lb. of fruit such as blueberries. If you are dealing with more fruit than this, then you may want to invest in a fruit crusher, but never use a blender to crush any kind of wine making fruit.

When the fermentation starts the wine yeast will produce enzymes that will naturally break down the fruit in a more natural, gentler way. The pectic enzyme that is called for in most fruit wine recipes will also help in the regard. For this reason you do not need to do a lot; let the yeast do if for you.

With that being said, there are still some things you can do to counteract using a blender to crush wine making fruit:

1. Shorten the amount of time you leave the fruit in the fermentation. The shorter the better. I would recommend 2, maybe 3 days at most. This will give less time for the bitterness to leach from the fruit.

2. Treat the wine with bentonite after the fermentation has completed. This will help to drop out the excessive tannin and other proteins that where extracted from the fruit. You may even want to use the bentonite more than once.

3. Age the wine longer than you normally would. Many of the flavor affects of having too much tannin in the wine can be resolved with additional aging. Instead of 3 to 6 months, think more along the lines of 9 to 15 months. Quite often this will be enough to bring the wine back into a flavorful balance.

I hope this helps you out, and I hope your wine turns out great, regardless. Just remember that using a blender to crush your wine making fruit is not the way to go.

Best Wishes,
Ed Kraus

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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.