Acid/Base Chemistry

1100 Words3 Pages

Yeast produce beverages that Americans twenty-one or older enjoy, they make drinks like beer, wine, and etc. One of the most widely seen genus and species is Saccharomycescerevisiae (winemakermag.com). There are many different strands of this organism. But this particular yest genus is so useful that one company seems that they only work with it, Vinters Harvest provides these organisms to home brewers and theirmain yeast is this one.

Yeast ferment sugars in order to produce energy and alcohol an unintended byproduct. This process lowers the pH of the surrounding environment. If not kept in check it can harm the organisms producing it (Hernandez-Cortez 2010).A group of researchers noted that the pH of agave and yeast could get too low if left untreated, which causes a dip in the fermentation production of the organism.

The pH of wine is in a range of 3.3 to 3.7 according to one source (Pandell 1999). This is the acidity of all the different acids making up this substance. In all wines one of the most predominant acids is tartaric acid (Lamikanra 1997). pH is a scale from 1-14; to calculate it one takes the negative log of the hydronium ion concentration. One is very acidic, 7 is neutral, and 14 classified as a strong base. Therefore, wine would be considered an acidic beverage according to this scale. While something like pure water is neutral.

The pH of wine can be affected during the fermentation process. If temperature gets too high then yeast will stop fermenting the sugars into alcohol (English Montreal School Board 2005). These organisms might stop the process because the heat could have denatured them. With no microbes working means that fewer acids would have been created in the product. Making the wine more basic t...

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Reisinger Hubert, King C. Judson. 1995. Extraction and sorption of acetic acid at pH above pKa to form calcium magnesium acetate. American Chemical Society Journal. 34:845-852. Available from ACS Publications. (pubs.acs.org)

Titration of Alanine with Hydroxide. University of New England. Available from: faculty.une.edu Accessed Sep 26,2011

Yeast Strains Chart. Wine maker magazine. Available from winemakermag.com. AccessedSep 26,2011.

2005. The chemistry of wine making. Available from the English Montreal School Board. Available from: emsb.qc.ca. Sep 26,2011

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