Vinegar at the Rim: Is This High Acidity or a Defect?

Lot A: citric acid gives the lemon/citrus cut; malic acid gives the green-apple mid; sweetness and body buffer them so the acidity reads transparent and integrated. This is the profile the acidity attribute was built to describe.

Lot B:

• Acetic acid - vinegar, volatile, perceived both orthonasally and retronasally. It is also an odorant, which is why the green bag smells of nail-polish remover: you are smelling volatile acids and their ethyl esters, not tasting them.
• Lactic acid - yogurt, creamy, mouth-coating; explains the syrupy body and the flatness where fruit acids should sit.
• A drying, stinging back-of-throat finish - the signature of volatile acids plus astringency, not of a bright structured acidity.

The scoring error. The SCA acidity attribute measures the quality of acidity - lively, transparent, sweet-tart, integrated with sweetness and body - not its intensity. A 9.0 is a statement that the acidity is excellent. A harsh vinegar sting is intense and bad; scoring it 9.0 confuses quantity with quality, and it also hides the defect that should have been written on the defect line.

Chemistry footnote worth saying aloud: pH and titratable acidity answer different questions. A liquid can have a moderate pH and still taste sharply sour, because volatile acids are potent odorants as well as acids. 'It measures low pH' is not a defence of a vinegar cup.

Run it in order; stop as soon as the answer is clear, and record per cup.

1. Smell the green, then the dry grounds. Volatile acids are strongest where there is no liquid to hold them. Vinegar/ester at dry is a strong signal.
2. Smell at the break, hot. Acetic reads sharpest at high temperature; fruit acids soften. Take the note deliberately at 4 minutes, not just at cool-down.
3. Taste hot (~70 °C) and again at ~40 °C. If the vinegar sharpens when hot and the fruit fades, it is volatile acid, not fruit acidity.
4. Pinch the nose and taste. If the 'sourness' drops away when retronasal flow is blocked, a large part of it was aroma, not acid - a defect signature.
5. Dilute 1:1 with hot water. A desirable acidity rounds off and stays pleasant; a defect usually survives dilution and gets uglier and cleaner-edged.
6. Check repeatability across all five cups and against a reference set (acetic, lactic, citric, malic standards) so the panel is arguing about the same thing rather than about vocabulary.

Decision rule: a note that is volatile, heat-amplified, retronasally dominant, dilution-proof and repeatable across cups is a defect. A bright acid that softens with dilution, reads clean and integrates with sweetness is style.

Severity first: a vinegar/sauerkraut character at this intensity is a fault, not a taint - faults deduct 4 points per affected cup, taints 2.

Assume 3 of 5 cups carry it:

• Defect line: 3 × 4 = −12
• Uniformity: 2 affected cups lose their points, so 3 clean cups × 2 = 6
• Clean Cup: a non-coffee flavour means the affected cups are not clean either, so 6
• Sweetness: stands only if the cups still read sweet, which a ferment-driven cup often does not

The acidity score has to come down too. You cannot deduct 12 points on the defect line and leave a 9.0 acidity standing as if the cup were excellent; the attribute score and the defect score are describing the same liquid. A defensible re-score treats the acidity as low-quality or defective and lets Flavor, Aftertaste and Balance fall with it.

Then write what actually happened: the lot is not 'a complex ferment'. It is an over-fermented honey with a fault, on a form that never recorded the fault. That distinction is what the producing farm needs in order to fix the 72 h protocol, and it is what the next buyer needs in order not to buy it.