Choose what you're building, enter your figures, and calculate. This is a working guideline built from published bartending technique — always taste and adjust from there, since real fruit varies with ripeness and variety. Results travel, too — pass a build straight through from the Non-Alcoholic Balance Calculator or Shelf Life & Storage Calculator on to the Batch & Costing Calculator.
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Field notes
Why lemon and lime aren't interchangeable
Both run about 6% total acidity, but lemon is essentially all citric acid while lime splits roughly 4% citric and 2% malic. Citric hits fast and fades; malic lingers longer and reads softer — which is why a straight citric-acid swap for lime juice tastes close, but not quite right, until a little malic acid is added back in.
What "10% solution" means here
Bartending convention builds an acid solution as grams of acid per 100ml of water, not per 100ml of finished solution — a "10% solution" is 10g of acid stirred into 100ml water, not 10g dissolved into a 100ml final volume. This tool follows that same convention so the numbers match what you'd see in a bar's prep sheet.
Super Juice isn't a flavor match, it's an acid + oil match
Super Juice stretches real citrus roughly six-fold by extracting peel oil and matching the fruit's acid content with citric and malic acid — it's genuinely close to fresh juice, but consistency depends on ripeness and how long the peels steep. Refrigerate and use within 1–2 weeks before oxidation starts to show as a metallic off-flavor.
The juice figures are titratable acidity
Lemon at ~6% citric, lime at ~6% total split roughly 4% citric and 2% malic, and the milder juices at ~0.8–1.2% are published titratable-acidity values, not guesses. They are typical figures — a specific lime in a specific season will vary — but they are a defensible baseline rather than an invented one.
Acid-only is a real limitation
Acid-adjusted juice matches the acidity of citrus. It does not replicate body, pulp, peel oil, or aroma — the things that make fresh citrus taste like citrus. It is an excellent way to stretch scarce fruit and a poor way to replace it entirely.
pH is not the same as %TA
Two juices can share the same titratable acidity but sit at different pH because buffering capacity — the juice's native mix of acids, sugars, and minerals — resists pH change by different amounts. The pH figures here are an approximate acid-to-pH curve per acid type, not a substitute for a meter, especially for anything you plan to can or hot-fill.
Gram-for-gram acid swaps change sourness, not just chemistry
Citric, malic, tartaric, and acetic acid don't taste equally sour at equal weight — malic and tartaric read softer than citric at the same %TA, and acetic reads sharper and more volatile. Swapping acids gram-for-gram without accounting for that will under- or over-shoot the sourness you were aiming for.
Sourness is one lever in a bigger balance
Getting the acid right is necessary but not sufficient — how it reads against a spirit's own character is a separate question. The Spirit & Botanical Pairing Matchmaker is built for that side of the decision.
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