Subject: Request for Advice on Affordable Wine/Cider Lab Equipment

[Chuck Ghale (Nepali Brewboy)]

Hello Cider Gurus,

I hope this message finds you well.

I’m reaching out from Manang Valley Wine, a small winery in Nepal producing still apple wine using apples from our own orchard. We’re looking to set up a basic yet reliable lab to test our wines, and I’d greatly appreciate your input and recommendations for affordable equipment to measure the following parameters:

1. Sugar (refractometer)

2. Specific density

3. pH

4. Total acidity

5. Volatile acidity

6. Free SO₂ and total SO₂

7. Alcohol

8. Dissolved oxygen

9. Turbidity

10. Titrable acidity

Our focus is on finding accurate, durable equipment without breaking the bank, so any suggestions—specific brands, models, or suppliers—would be incredibly valuable to us.

Thank you in advance for your guidance and for sharing your expertise with a small but passionate producer from the Himalayas.

Warm regards,
Chheke Ghale

[jeff.k...@gmail.com]

Hi Chheke,

Your list includes a lot of parameters I never use.  However, a few of them are easy to measure:

1.  Sugar: careful with the use of a refractometer.  I don't use one myself, but my understanding is that alcohol will affect the values.  During fermentation, I follow sugar concentrations by measuring specific gravity (see below) and cross referencing with the sugar content tables Claude Jolicoeur provides in his book.

2,  Specific density:  Inexpensive hydrometer, available from any beer/wine supply store.  You get what you pay for, but absolute values are usually less useful than relative values.  Even cheap hydrometers will show you reasonably accurate trends.

3. pH.   I often use paper strips if I am just aiming for a range.  These are dirt cheap.  As for pH meters  - you get what you pay for but even inexpensive ones will give reasonably reliable results if you calibrate before measurement.

4. Total acidity:  Inexpensive titration kit.  I minimize reagent useage by titrating with 1 cc dosing syringes.  

5. Volatile acidity:  never had to measure this.  I just sniff.  It is pretty obvious when it is a problem.

6. Free/total SO2: there are titration kits available but I have never used them.

7. Alcohol:  You can very accurately measure this yourself by building a small distillation system.  This is really easy to do.  Then you measure the alcohol content with a hydrometer and do a bit of basic math.  

8.  DO.  Never had to measure this.  

9. Turbidity, never had to measure this.

10.  Titratable acidity is just another name for total acidity.  See #4 above.

Hope that helps!

I big european online distributor is www.brouland.com, they should have most of what you are looking for and they should be able to ship to Nepal if needed.

/Jeff

[CGJ]

Hi Chheke,

I do use a refractometer while doing the actual pressing and find that it gives a very nice first impression of sugar content. I've been using a simple  Brix/Specific Gravity Refractometer with ATC from Northernbrewer.com. It uses very little material (a few drops), and has an adjustable lens to make viewing the scales (SG AND Brix) easier; good lighting will be essential to being able to read it. It uses a one-point zeroing calibration against water, but mine checks out to be accurate against a hydrometer within 1/2 degree brix (2 points SG). I do not know who the manufacturer is. Cost is 50USD, but that company does tend to be on then expensive side. I don't know about shipping.

As soon as the pressing is done and I'm making my "formal" measurements, I switch to a hydrometer (discussed by Claude Jolicoeur in his book, and calibrated according to his free online worksheets). I have a VeeGee 6602-7S that I purchased from Grainger.com  (a generic US supply house). Grainger's part number is 20KL56, price is 38USD. I had previously bought a very nice, super-precise, dual-scale (Brix and Temperature) hydrometer, but it turned out to be complete overkill, very long so it look a large amount of sample, and likely very breakable. And, importantly, it is only calibrated in Brix, meaning that once fermentation begins, I would need a conversion table to derive SG. The hydrometer that I do use regularly is calibrated in AG and small enough to only require about 40 ml of sample in the 50 ml graduated cylinder that I use as a hydrometer jar). You will need good lighting and your eye-glasses to read it accurately, but it seems fairly robust (I dropped it onto a plastic tabletop once and it did not shatter), although I do have a spare, just in case. Don't neglect getting a glass "hydrometer jar" (a graduated cylinder without the graduations) to sample into  (glass rather than plastic jar is better since it allows you to see through, rather than just look down from above). Grainger sell the jars as part 795ZW0, VeeGee model 21050-100, but that is a 100ml. Northerbrewer sells something in glass, but I don't know the volume.

I have just added a nice little pH probe to my tool kit. I was finding narrow-range pH paper very hard to read (and unreliable after storage), and I believe that I have been over-sulfiting my juice if I want to try to get a wild fermentation while avoiding some of the nastier MLF bugs (again, see Claude's book for the relationship between pH and sulfite, I think Andrew Lea also covers it in his, and certainly there are links to Andrew's work on the subject online). I have not yet used this pH probe on juice, but did have the occasion to use it on my (very acid) well water and the value was within 0.1 pH of what a commercial lab reported in a more formal test. The unit I have is "pH54 Waterproof Tester with Replaceable Probe" 43USD bought directly the manufacturer milwaukeeinstruments.com. I selected this one because it is NOT automatically calibrated, but allows the user to use two potentiometers under the cap to set a two-point intercept-and-slope calibration. This is great, because you can do whatever you want with it, rather than being forced by the firmware into calibration at 4 and 7 or 7 and 10. Using calibration buffers at 4 and 1.68, I hope to be able to get a more accurate assessment of my own juice (pH typically between 3.2 and 3.6). Note that if you purchase this from the manufacturer, you will need to purchase also the buffers (they sell little single-use sachets of buffers and rinse so that you always have fresh material while you are calibrating), rinse and storage solution. You will spend more on the various buffers and other solutions than the probe. Milwaukee has O2 and SO2 probes also, but I don't need them and have no idea how the price compares to other vendors.

Best wishes on your venture!
Carl Johnson
West Barnstable
Massachusetts (USA)