Titratable Acidity

​The American Society of Brewing Chemists defines titratable acidity as, “the number of acidic protons that the organic acid potentially can donate. It is experimentally determined by measuring the amount of sodium hydroxide required to raise the pH to 8.2, where neutralization of the acids occurs” (ASBC Beer-8).
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Titratable acidity measurements are used to determine the concentration of acidic compounds in solution, including organic acids and free protons. In contrast, pH measurements can only be used to determine the concentration of free protons in solution and cannot be used to determine the concentration of organic acids. This is important because organic acids are frequently the compounds responsible for providing flavor traits. What does this mean? To put it simply: titratable acidity measurements will generally correlate with taste perception of acidity, while pH measurements will not.