Titrating

[carlene]

Can you explain what titrating is and how it's done?

[grapeadmin]

Titrating is adding small amounts of a base (sodium hydroxide) to an acid until the acid (vinegar) is neutralized by the base. If you can measure how much of the base it takes to neutralize the acid, you will know the amount of acid present. I don't do this with vinegar because our test kit is designed for wine and it would likely take 10x the amount of base to get a reading. Unless you are selling the stuff commercially, I would go by taste rather than titration.

thanks
john

[carlene]

Maybe the better word is diluting rather than titrating. I am looking for a more objective way to get the acid down to about 6% (because this is what my commercial bottles say) than just tasting. My vinegar is so strong!! and there's just not a lot of tasting I can do, even through a sugar cube, to know what I'm doing with it. I didn't dilute my wine when I started, so can I assume I'm at about 12% acidity? And dilute it by 1/2?

[grapeadmin]

Here is a link to our website that explains how to do a titration. The only thing is if you don't use a stronger base (reagent) you will need lots of sodium hydroxide as vinegar is about 10 times more acidic than wine. You might need 60-70 ml of sodium hydroxide to get the color to change.

john