So much to learn !

I keep reading about yet more things I should be doing........

"WTF are you on about ?" I here you say.

At the moment, I'm thinking about understanding pH and acid's by "titration" and also that the "must" must be balanced (as well as the finished product) for the ferment to be as successful as possible.

I have a "Ritchies" test kit and a small electronic pH meter. I've used the test meter, but as yet I haven't got round to using the Ritchies test kit.

The acid/pH thing is a bit weird. Why? because there are various suggestions as to which one should be used and how much or more correctly what the pH should be to create the acid environment for the yeast to flourish - well that's what a lot of the stuff I've read suggests - though I've also read suggestions that it doesn't matter too much about what the acid/pH is for the ferment, as long as you use some to balance the wine when it's finished.

There is also the issue of which acid too use i.e. the 3 "normal" ones suggested for wine making are Citric, Tartaric and Malic acids.

My confusion arises, because some suggest that you should only really be using tartaric, whereas lots of recipes include citric in them. Plus the older mead making book I have suggests a blend of acid i.e. 2 parts malic to 1 part tartaric for mead making (which is what most of my wine making consists of).

To make the confusion worse, if the article/post/whatever I'm reading, has come from the US, the acid titration is usually about tartaric acid, whereas I understand that UK instructions/advice/articles/etc will give the figures as sulphuric acid and then have to be converted to tartaric.

Damn! even typing this and thinking about it is making my head spin.

Ah well, back to the internet too see what I can find, and to try and understand this issue.

TTFN!