Subject: Cider Digest #2074, 21 May 2017 Date: Sun, 21 May 2017 09:42:03 -0600 (MDT) From: cider-request@talisman.com Cider Digest #2074 21 May 2017 Cider and Perry Discussion Forum Contents: Dabinett or Yarlington mill for the west coast? ("Richard Anderson") Re: Cider Digest #2073, 16 May 2017 (Stephen Wood) Re: Cider Digest #2073, 16 May 2017 (gloria bell) Conversion number for titratable acidity (Andrew Lea) NOTE: Digest appears whenever there is enough material to send one. Send ONLY articles for the digest to cider@talisman.com. Use cider-request@talisman.com for subscribe/unsubscribe/admin requests. Archives of the Digest are available at www.talisman.com/cider#Archives Digest Janitor: Dick Dunn ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Dabinett or Yarlington mill for the west coast? From: "Richard Anderson" Date: Tue, 16 May 2017 12:00:42 -0700 I have grown both for nearly 20 years in NW Washington State with excellent results. For the most part to they are annual croppers and easy to maintain. Of the two, the YM is a heavy cropper and has lighter tannins than the Dabinett. As bittersweets I would recommend them highly. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Cider Digest #2073, 16 May 2017 From: Stephen Wood Date: Tue, 16 May 2017 15:16:19 -0400 TA I don't know what concentration of NaOH you're using, but it can't be the same as ours. We use N/10, with phenolphthalein. The conversion factor only tells you the percentage of acid the solution would contain if all the acid in it was the same (malic, tartaric, sulfuric, whateveric). Unlike pH, which is wicked important for SO2 calculations, and microbial questions, the TA is something you can almost detect in your mouth. We're pretty meticulous about measuring pH, but we titrate juice at pressing just to check the impression of our mouths. Then the burette usually gets dusty. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong in this. We use .15, which expresses the acid as tartaric, for the simple reason that that's how we started 25 years ago when we didn't know any better, and we want to be able to look across years and compare without a calculator. This info is only useful to us as cidermakers and growers -- - it's not a marketing device, and we're not entering an acid competition. If we used a conversion factor of .536, we'd get numbers that would make us wonder whether we should put the cider in our mouths, and risk the enamel on our teeth. Stephen M. Wood, Farnum Hill Ciders/Poverty Lane Orchards, Lebanon, NH=20 (603) 252-5696 swood@farnumhillciders.com ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Cider Digest #2073, 16 May 2017 From: gloria bell Date: Tue, 16 May 2017 12:55:53 -0700 As for fireblight - not a lot to speak of here (thankfully). I also have Stoke Red, Harry Masters jersey, Chisel Jersey, Ellis Bitter and Bulmers Norman, true foxwhelp (apparently runs true and. It faux whelp) graft wood left. I'm on the west coast.=20 Thanks for the info Charles! Good to know! ------------------------------ Subject: Conversion number for titratable acidity From: Andrew Lea Date: Wed, 17 May 2017 12:26:20 +0100 On 16/05/2017 Tom Brown wrote: > > The Pacific Northwest extension publication hard cider production and > Orchard management in the Pacific Northwest advises that to obtain titratable > acidity of cider to multiply the number of milliliters of sodium hydroxide > used by .536 to get the grams per liter of malic acid. > > However the New cider makers handbook provides quite a bit of good basis > for the use of .89 as the multiplier to convert from tartaric acid to malic. > > I doubt either sources are mistaken. The chances are much greater that I > am mistaken. Both figures are correct. They both apply to different things. I'm afraid you are trying to conflate two unrelated ideas. The multiplier given in the PNW handbook allows you to calculate the TA, as malic acid equivalents, if you follow the exact titration procedure given. By exact I mean the exact specified volumes and strengths of sample and reagents. If you use different volumes and strengths you will need a different conversion factor. For instance, see here from my website http://www.cider.org.uk/acid_titration.html where the volumes and strengths and hence the conversion factor is different. It's all about the amount of alkali (NaOH) you need to neutralise a given amount of acid in the sample, and that is concentration and volume dependent. The factor given in Claude's book is something quite different. That's for the case where you might have been using a winemakers titration kit or method, where results are commonly expressed "as tartaric" because it's the chief acid in grapes. As cidermakers we tend to express "as malic" because it's the chief acid in apples. Because the molecular weights of the two acids differ, we need a conversion factor if you want to change the one into the other. In itself, that factor has absolutely nothing to do with the titration calculation. It's just to take account of the differing molecular weights of the different acids. Andrew Lea nr Oxford, UK www.cider.org.uk ------------------------------ End of Cider Digest #2074 *************************