Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
For reductions greater than 2.0g/L, I do not recommend
adding potassium carbonate as it can impart undesired salty
tastes. Instead, I recommend blending. You can blend with
water or other juices with lower acidity. In general, you don't
want to blend with too much water as that will reduce the
flavor and increase the amount of sugar you'll need to add.
Keep in mind that whatever fruit juices you use for blending
shouldn't overpower the primary ingredient. This will require
a bit of algebra.
Pretend I want to make blueberry wine. To that end, I have
juiced some blueberries, and tested the acidity of the must at
an excessively sour 11g/L. I want 7g/L. I am making 5.5
gallons of must.
There are 3.79 liters in a gallon. If my desired acidity is 7g/L,
then the total amount of acid in 5.5 gallons of must will be
7g/L × 3.79L/gallon × 5.5 gallons = 145.9 grams. My
blueberry must contains 11g/L of acidity, which works out to
11g/L × 3.79L/gallon = 41.7 grams per gallon.
If I wanted to dilute the juice with water alone, it would be
easy to determine how much blueberry must I could use by
dividing the total amount of desired acid in 5.5 gallons of
must (145.9 grams) by the number of grams of acid in a
gallon of my blueberry must (41.7 grams). So 145.9 grams /
41.7 grams per gallon = 3.5 gallons. So to make 5.5 gallons of
must with the proper level of acidity, I would use 3.5 gallons
of blueberry must and make up the remaining two gallons
with water. Because blueberries are very strongly flavored,
this would likely work fine as long as we added tannin and
sugar as needed.
