"Michael Brill" > wrote in message
om...
> So I'm staring at the results from a MLF test and I'm wondering if
> there's a faint indicator of malic acid or it's just the lights.
> Paper chromatography seems very qualitative - I'm 90% sure that malos
> are complete as I don't see any dots for malic acid, but it's all very
> blue/yellow/green and fuzzy. Even the testing documentation stated
> that when there is no longer any dot there still may be some malic
> acid left. When does one declare victory?

Hi Michael,

You're correct that paper chromatography is not sensitive enough to be
sure that all the malic acid is gone. To be sure, you need an enzyme test
from a lab or possibly the malic acid test strips from www.accuvin.com. (I
have some of the latter, but have not tested them against known standards
yet. ) What most people do is just confirm that malolactic is occurring and
has come near completion, then bulk age for about a year and assume the wine
is stable. Other options are sterile filtering and adding lysozyme before
bottling to be safe. I use the bulk age then lysozyme approach, but it's
expensive.

Happy Holidays,

John