Hi,
Before bottling some red Zin, I tested the SO2. The titret shows the
SO2 is 100 ppm. I know that titrets are not really accurate for red
wine but in the past I have used them and not had readings like this
before. I have not tasted it yet but there is no sulphur oder.

PH is between 3 and 4, maybe 3.5. (I only have some test paper strips)

The test was just after racking wine that had been fined. It was
racked into a just sulfite washed carboy. The solution was 1 tsp for
about 2 gallons of water and I drained it but did not rinse it.

Could that be the cause of the high reading?

Note that I did not add any sulfite in the process and thus why I am
unclear why the reading is so high unless some wines have higher
concentrations than others.
The alcohol measures on my viometer at 15% but I do not know how
accruate those little things are.

Using pH strip test is useless in winemaking. A ph of 3,30 is 10 times
more acidic than a pH of 3,40. So as you can see if you tell us your
pH is between 3 and 4 is way too large and completely useless. So2 is
pH dependant which mean that for the same quantity of So2 added the
amount that will protect your wine ( the free So2 form ) will be higher
in a wine with a lower pH.

Now, you said that you get 100ppm with a Titrets kit while you didn't
make any sulphite addition except the solution that where not rinse in
the carboy. You need to know that most yeast strain will produce 10-20
ppm of sulphite during the fermentation as a by-product. So even if
you don't add any you will have some when the wine is young. Then, the
remaining sulphite solution should have add a little more maybe 10 ppm
but could be more if the quantity of solution was noticeable. I don't
think it could have been enough to raise your level to 100ppm. Of
course, one other thing to know is that Titrets overstate your results
by aound 20 ppm. 80 ppm free So2 is certainly too high for someone who
didn't add any. Maybe the grapes where highly sulphite by the vineyard
? But even there, most of it would have been consume during the
fermentation. So, my best guess is simply a bad measurement with the
Titrets ( these things can sometime be tricky ) as it is impossible to
get 80 ppm with no sulphite addition. If you have more vial, try at
least a second test. Remove 20 ppm from your reading.

Séb

Mark wrote:
> Hi,
> Before bottling some red Zin, I tested the SO2. The titret shows the
> SO2 is 100 ppm. I know that titrets are not really accurate for red
> wine but in the past I have used them and not had readings like this
> before. I have not tasted it yet but there is no sulphur oder.
>
> PH is between 3 and 4, maybe 3.5. (I only have some test paper strips)
>
> The test was just after racking wine that had been fined. It was
> racked into a just sulfite washed carboy. The solution was 1 tsp for
> about 2 gallons of water and I drained it but did not rinse it.
>
> Could that be the cause of the high reading?
>
> Note that I did not add any sulfite in the process and thus why I am
> unclear why the reading is so high unless some wines have higher
> concentrations than others.
> The alcohol measures on my viometer at 15% but I do not know how
> accruate those little things are.

I understand that the pH scale is logarithmic, but I was of the
understanding that "a pH of 3 is 10 times more acidic than a pH of 4";
rather than as you suggested below. Have I been incorrect all this time?



"Using pH strip test is useless in winemaking. A ph of 3,30 is 10 times
more acidic than a pH of 3,40. "

It's an error. A pH of 3 is ten time more acidic than a pH of 4. I
should not type while drinking wine

Séb


Ric wrote:
> I understand that the pH scale is logarithmic, but I was of the
> understanding that "a pH of 3 is 10 times more acidic than a pH of 4";
> rather than as you suggested below. Have I been incorrect all this time?
>
>
>
> "Using pH strip test is useless in winemaking. A ph of 3,30 is 10 times
> more acidic than a pH of 3,40. "

Au contraire, Séb! You MUST continue to drink wine at all times!

thanks for the clarification

Ric



It's an error. A pH of 3 is ten time more acidic than a pH of 4. I
should not type while drinking wine

Séb


Ric wrote:
> I understand that the pH scale is logarithmic, but I was of the
> understanding that "a pH of 3 is 10 times more acidic than a pH of 4";
> rather than as you suggested below. Have I been incorrect all this time?
>
>
>
> "Using pH strip test is useless in winemaking. A ph of 3,30 is 10 times
> more acidic than a pH of 3,40. "

I tested from a new sample and it still changes at 100 ppm.
So what should I do about it?

Send a sample to a lab. You can have it tested for about $12.00. I would not trust the titrets. In my opinion, it is better to do this than screw up your wine.

"Mark" > wrote in message oups.com...

I tested from a new sample and it still changes at 100 ppm.
So what should I do about it?

Where are some places that test on the east coast?
Shy of mail testing, is there anything else I can do?
I had done my file racking and my 5 gallon carboy is not not full. I
am maybe 3 bottles shy of being full and do not want to spoil the wine
with that air space.

What can I do about that, if I am going to wait to mail out a test?

Paul E. Lehmann wrote:
> Send a sample to a lab. You can have it tested for about $12.00. I would not trust the titrets. In my opinion, it is better to do this than screw up your wine.
>
> "Mark" > wrote in message oups.com...
>
> I tested from a new sample and it still changes at 100 ppm.
> So what should I do about it?
>
> ------=_NextPart_000_0017_01C6A142.30B01F40
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> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
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> <STYLE></STYLE>
> </HEAD>
> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
> <DIV>Send a sample to a lab.&nbsp; You can have it tested for about
> $12.00.&nbsp; I would not trust the titrets.&nbsp; In my opinion, it is better
> to do this than screw up your wine.</DIV>
> <DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
> <BLOCKQUOTE
> style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
> <DIV>"Mark" &lt;<A
> ">smilemagi@yahoo. com</A>&gt; wrote in message
> <A
> oglegroups.com">news:1152232947.970426.191410@s53g 2000cws.googlegroups.com</A>...</DIV><BR>I
> tested from a new sample and it still changes at 100 ppm.<BR>So what should I
> do about it?<BR></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>
>
> ------=_NextPart_000_0017_01C6A142.30B01F40--

I don't know of a lab on the East Coast though there should be one somewhere. I live in Maryland and send samples to Vinquiry in California. Perhaps there is a commercial winery near you that has an AO apparatus (best method for testing free SO2) that will test for you. Next year I plan on getting my own setup. The sample you send is quite small. I know that Vinquiry will send you sample bottles free. You could consider racking your wine into smaller containers since you already have head space.
"Mark" > wrote in message oups.com...
Where are some places that test on the east coast?
Shy of mail testing, is there anything else I can do?
I had done my file racking and my 5 gallon carboy is not not full. I
am maybe 3 bottles shy of being full and do not want to spoil the wine
with that air space.

What can I do about that, if I am going to wait to mail out a test?

Paul E. Lehmann wrote:
> Send a sample to a lab. You can have it tested for about $12.00. I would not trust the titrets. In my opinion, it is better to do this than screw up your wine.
>
> "Mark" > wrote in message oups.com...
>
> I tested from a new sample and it still changes at 100 ppm.
> So what should I do about it?
>
> ------=_NextPart_000_0017_01C6A142.30B01F40
> Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
> X-Google-AttachSize: 1018
>
> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
> <HTML><HEAD>
> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2912" name=GENERATOR>
> <STYLE></STYLE>
> </HEAD>
> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
> <DIV>Send a sample to a lab.&nbsp; You can have it tested for about
> $12.00.&nbsp; I would not trust the titrets.&nbsp; In my opinion, it is better
> to do this than screw up your wine.</DIV>
> <DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
> <BLOCKQUOTE
> style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
> <DIV>"Mark" &lt;<A
> ">smilemagi@yahoo. com</A>&gt; wrote in message
> <A
> oglegroups.com">news:1152232947.970426.191410@s53g 2000cws.googlegroups.com</A>...</DIV><BR>I
> tested from a new sample and it still changes at 100 ppm.<BR>So what should I
> do about it?<BR></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>
>
> ------=_NextPart_000_0017_01C6A142.30B01F40--

Mark wrote:
> I tested from a new sample and it still changes at 100 ppm.
> So what should I do about it?

At this point, I'd suggest a test trial of the titrets against some
other wine - either yours or commercial. If you know the SO2 content of
that wine, that'd be best but even without that you should not get over
30-50ppm. Or you could test it against an SO2 solution of known
concentration. If the titret batch is bad, the test should confirm
that. Otherwise that wine cannot be measure by titrets properly for
some reason and you need to use another method.

Or if you're at the bottling stage already and the wine is good and you
can't smell excessive sulfite, why not just bottle? Or bottle with
small sulfite adition - 10-20ppm - if you intend to age the wine for
longer time. Lots of people don't measure sulifte at all and still
produce good wine - if you know how much you've added over time and the
pH, you can guess pretty well how much you should add, if any, at
bottling. Just one more option to consider.

Oh, one more, have you tried diluting the sample? Sometimes red wines
are pretty hard to measure otherwise with titrets.

Pp

pp wrote:
> At this point, I'd suggest a test trial of the titrets against some
> other wine - either yours or commercial. If you know the SO2 content of
> that wine, that'd be best but even without that you should not get over
> 30-50ppm.

Don't mean to pick at your post, pp but at first I thought this sounded
like a good idea, but on further thought, I'm wondering.

In the first place how would anyone know the ppm of a commercial wine
since its not listed and why do you say it should not get over 30-50
ppm since the legal limit is something like 350 ppm in the U.S. And,
how would the poster know the SO2 content of any of their own wine
since they don't have a good way to measure it in the first place?

miker wrote:
> pp wrote:
> > At this point, I'd suggest a test trial of the titrets against some
> > other wine - either yours or commercial. If you know the SO2 content of
> > that wine, that'd be best but even without that you should not get over
> > 30-50ppm.
>
> Don't mean to pick at your post, pp but at first I thought this sounded
> like a good idea, but on further thought, I'm wondering.
>
> In the first place how would anyone know the ppm of a commercial wine
> since its not listed and why do you say it should not get over 30-50
> ppm since the legal limit is something like 350 ppm in the U.S. And,
> how would the poster know the SO2 content of any of their own wine
> since they don't have a good way to measure it in the first place?

In both cases, the known number are total SO2, not free SO2. For the
commercial wines, 350 total SO (or 250?) might be the limit, but a
decent wine won't get anywhere close to that, especially if you pick a
fruity white for the test.

For own wine, apart from what's there as free sulifte after ferment,
which won't be more than 10-20ppm, the poster knows how much they added
over the lifetime of the wine - from what I remember from the post, the
issue was that the _total_ added SO2 was lower than the measured free
level of 100 ppm. Free SO2 by definition has to be always
(significantly) lower than total SO2, so if you've made additions of
say 80ppm over the life of the wine, there is no way your free SO2 will
measure at 100ppm.

Also, I find that after measuring sulfite levels over 2-3 years, I have
a pretty good idea where my free SO2 is +/-10ppm during bulk aging, so
that can be used as an additional sanity check.

Granted, this is a pretty rough check overall, but in this case we'll
dealing with a pretty extreme free SO2 value of 100ppm, so I'd still
think that a well-made commercial or home wine would measure nowhere
close to that, so the test should work.

Pp

piwine.com

Their in Erie, PA.

Mark wrote:
> Where are some places that test on the east coast?
> Shy of mail testing, is there anything else I can do?
> I had done my file racking and my 5 gallon carboy is not not full. I
> am maybe 3 bottles shy of being full and do not want to spoil the wine
> with that air space.
>
> What can I do about that, if I am going to wait to mail out a test?
>
> Paul E. Lehmann wrote:
>> Send a sample to a lab. You can have it tested for about $12.00. I would not trust the titrets. In my opinion, it is better to do this than screw up your wine.
>>
>> "Mark" > wrote in message oups.com...
>>
>> I tested from a new sample and it still changes at 100 ppm.
>> So what should I do about it?
>>
>> ------=_NextPart_000_0017_01C6A142.30B01F40
>> Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
>> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>> X-Google-AttachSize: 1018
>>
>> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
>> <HTML><HEAD>
>> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
>> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2912" name=GENERATOR>
>> <STYLE></STYLE>
>> </HEAD>
>> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
>> <DIV>Send a sample to a lab.&nbsp; You can have it tested for about
>> $12.00.&nbsp; I would not trust the titrets.&nbsp; In my opinion, it is better
>> to do this than screw up your wine.</DIV>
>> <DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
>> <BLOCKQUOTE
>> style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
>> <DIV>"Mark" &lt;<A
>> ">smilemagi@yahoo. com</A>&gt; wrote in message
>> <A
>> oglegroups.com">news:1152232947.970426.191410@s53g 2000cws.googlegroups.com</A>...</DIV><BR>I
>> tested from a new sample and it still changes at 100 ppm.<BR>So what should I
>> do about it?<BR></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>
>>
>> ------=_NextPart_000_0017_01C6A142.30B01F40--
>

Did you use Citric Acid in your sulfite solution for sanitization? I
seem to recall that that'll invalidate the test rather quickly (and if
I remember it failed to work on my meads, which I acidified with
Citric).

Jason

Mark wrote:
> I tested from a new sample and it still changes at 100 ppm.
> So what should I do about it?