Hi....from a previous post somewhere....maybe on here........

Subject: New (old) way to measure TA

Always trying to beat the system without spending $300
on equipment
and not being very scientific to start with while
snooping around on
Winepress yesterday I found an article about T/A
posted by
"WineTheif," the eighth post down from the top at the
following
link that made a lot of sense to me.

The only trick seems to be to master the flow rate
from the buret.
Here's the article with the link below in case the
photo does not
show up in this email.

****
Here's a hint on doing acid tests on red wines and red
fruit wines.. It
is really hard to look through the glass of the test
tube and tell if
the color has changed on red wines.. It is easy with
white and amber
color wines but it is hard to detect the change in red
wines.. So here
is an easy way to look for the change. You will need
your test kit and a
stir stick or back end of a spoon, and a white 3x5
card or white printer
paper.

Lay down the blank white paper or white 3x5 card and
use your stir stick
to put a test drop of your wine on the cardboard or
paper, before any
chems are added so you have a starting point. (in my
case I use the back
end of a spoon to stir with and place the drops) Then
add the 3 drops of
indicator and stir well. Then add the first .5-CC of
Sodium Hydroxide...
Stir vigoriously with your stick then lift the stir
stick out and put a
drop next to the last drop and compare. If no change
then repeat with
the next .5-CC of Sodium Hydroxide., stir and put
another drop on the
card and compare. When you see that the color changes
to grey you have
reached your Acid Content..

As you can see from the attached picture of this
BlackBerry wine that I
just started today, it's change of color took place
exactly at 6-CC's of
Sodium Hydroxide.. Therefore having a TA of .60.

The test right before this one (I forgot to take pics)
changed to grey
at exactly 4.5-CC, so I added 3 level tsp's of Acid
Blend to my 3
gallons of must (1 tsp per gallon) and stirred it in
well. The test pic
attached here is the next test taken after this
addition..

This test is the 5th test on this must to get the Acid
where I wanted it
at .60. As I said before, I go slow, and add in stages
so I don't over
do it.

Hope this helps.