Well this took a long time to post. Our pressing day was fun, long and almost didn’t happen. The first problem was that the press was awfully small for our volumes, the second problem was that the press bleed valve would not close on the bladder press. We also believe that the pressure gauge [...]
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Chuck and I bottled about 15 gallons of Merlot in the morning before pressing. We ended up with 6 cases, 9 bottles and a magnum. I just got the rep-bottling lab results on the 2006 Merlot: Free SO2: 17 mg/L I added another 2g to bring it up to a target of 40 mg/L Oh and I racked it into the beer keg, ready for bottling! I soaked the barrel overnight in ProxyClean, rinsed it out and am nnow letting it sit with 5 gallons of citric acid to keep it moist. No leaks at all. I did a dry run with our filling system and it worked perfectly with complete flow control from the output end. I still need to sanitize the [...] Everything is registering 0 Brix. I hope waiting until next Sunday to press isn’t too long of an extended maceration. Here is the final chart:
I spoke with our winemaker friend about the 5 gallons of Cabernet we lost to acetobacter infection. One of his solutions was to save it until next year’s crush and throw it into the must when it at it’s peak fermentation (15 B). In his words, The yeast of the new fermentation will [...] You can smell it from the sidewalk. The Cabernet is still winning, with Merlot second and Syrah a distant third.
I transfered the “Gardner’s Block” Cabernet into one of the large, white fermenters. Its cap was almost to the top of the smaller one and I had to constantly punch it down to keep the skins on the juice. Sorry, Chuck, I should have listened to you. Things are roiling away, lots of CO2 and great smells. I am tracking temperature and Brix. The Cabernet continues to be the most vigorous. Click on the thumbnail to see a confusing chart. I am going to try to improve it as time permits. We should see temperatures go up correlated to sugar dropping, then [...] |
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