Re: Best PH Meter or Tester for Ferments

[Guest guest]

I'm new to fermenting vegetables, but I suspect the most reliable device for

checking if you've got lactic or acetic acid is your tongue. Acetic acid

has a very distinct vinegar flavor even at very low concentrations. In my

experience (making wine), lactic acid lends more of a " buttery " sensation.

(I'm not sure the " buttery " sensation comes across in vegetables, but it's

very obvious in wine.) pH measurements only tell you the pH--basically,

that's just the concentration of H+ ions in the solution. If the number is

below 7, it's acidic; if it's above 7 it's alkaline. But, it doesn't tell

you the source of the acidity or alkalinity. I'm sure there are tests to

identify particular acids, but I'm not familiar with them. Again, I'm a

rookie at vegetable fermentation. The veterans here may have a better

answer.

On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 3:12 PM, presenzz <marie-flore@...> wrote:

>

>

> Someone told me there is a difference between making vinegar and making

> lactic acid stuff. So, since I am new at this and would like to test the ph

> of my experiments to ensure that I am not making vinegar. I read that paper

> ferments are not reliable for home ferments. There are lots of testers and

> meters out there, some pricey and they all seem to require maintenance like

> with calibration and so forth. Can anyone recommend one that is affordable,

> easy to use and reliable, and especially not too hard to maintain with the

> calibration?

> Many thanks

>

>

>

--

Regards,

Harkness

[Guest guest]

Ditto what said. Seriously, when you have vinegar, one WHIFF and you

know it!

Wine vinegar is dead easy to make. Basically: get a bottle of wine. Drink

most of it. Leave about half an inch in the bottom, and forget about it for

a month. Bingo! You have vinegar!

To get fancy about it, buy a " mother of vinegar " which looks like wine

vinegar in a jar. Add 2 bottles of wine to a " sun tea " jar. Where the

pouring hole is in the top of the sun tea jar, glue a piece of cloth to keep

flies out, and then leave the top open there so oxygen can get in. Pour in

your mother of vinegar. Put the whole thing in a cabinet and forget about it

for 3 months or so. Now you have half a gallon of really GREAT wine vinegar.

Use the tap at the bottom to take out the vinegar. NOW comes the hard part.

There will be a kombucha-like scoby at the top, and you want to keep it

happy. But if you pour wine on top of it, it will sink and die. So ... you

float the scoby on top of wine corks! There are other clever methods of

keeping it afloat too, like using a tube to pour in more wine underneath the

scoby.

Anyway, you don't need a meter. You can use PH paper if you want, or add

some vinegar to some baking soda to see if it fizzes. But really, it's super

obvious when it is vinegar. Open a bottle of vinegar and smell it. You

*know* that smell! The hard part is just: don't sink the scoby. It takes

months to grow the first one, and after that it makes vinegar a lot faster.

But if it dies, it's not a huge deal, because another one will grow. Wine

will always turn into vinegar if oxygen gets to it.

On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 1:12 PM, presenzz <marie-flore@...> wrote:

> Someone told me there is a difference between making vinegar and making

> lactic acid stuff. So, since I am new at this and would like to test the ph

> of my experiments to ensure that I am not making vinegar. I read that paper

> ferments are not reliable for home ferments. There are lots of testers and

> meters out there, some pricey and they all seem to require maintenance like

> with calibration and so forth. Can anyone recommend one that is affordable,

> easy to use and reliable, and especially not too hard to maintain with the

> calibration?

> Many thanks

>

>

>

> ------------------------------------

>

>