The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Sorry, dear partners, I likely drove you all crazy the last two days. Well meant, but dumb. I must have said to Lori a half dozen times that I should back up the refractometer readings with a hydrometer reading, and even had the hydrometer sitting there, but was too lazy to get into the muck. All hail Doug and Bernardo's calling him to straighten us out.

One: Refractometer good for measuring brix before fermentation, bad after, and stops reading the must below 6 brix. How 'bout that. As soon as B delivered the news, we measured whipped out the hydrometer, and, lo and behold, we're around zero.

Then, B said Doug from PI said we could still and should still raise the sugar content and let that ferment down so that we end up in the 12% alcohol range. Doug's back of the envelope figures said about 5 lb sugar to raise 25 gallons of juice 3 brix. (We started at 19, this effectively would give us 22, which converts down to 12% alcohol - 22 x 0.55 sugar to alcohol conversion rate.) a number of our books and web sites roughly confirmed the calc. Doug said the sugar could be pitched, with or without Fermaid, and that the remaining yeasts would metabolize it.

B pitched his pretty much straight from the bag and into the must. (B, want to post to describe?).

Lori and I considered trying to find grape concentrate or Fermaid, but after an hour of calls determined it was not going to happen from anyone local, and it was already too late for overnight delivery from anyone. So we also used 5 lb sugar, but dissolved it into a few courts of juice from the must, over low heat, to make a simple syrup. This, cooled, we poured back into the barrel and stirred it in. That was maybe at 6:30 0r 7 PM.

Tried to raise Peter to ask him about similar treatment of his must - no word back yet.

Home at about 11:30 PM and, holy boy, nice cake and full fermentation going on in both the chapitalized barrels. Neither above room temp (70) but clearly working. Did not bother trying to get a hydrometer reading (though it would have been nice to have confirmed that the calcs resulted in 3 brix).

When the S&L barrel goes dry again, we'll add MLF. Will wait to hear from B+L and P re treatment of their barrels.

Election Day pressing? Sooner?