Friday, October 31, 2008

We need the heaters, soon, very soon

The two barrels we warmed last evening have fallen back to room temperature - seems like we need to get room temperature up a fair amount. I've sealed the exhaust fan but we'll need Peter's (or any one's) space heaters ASAP. Right now:
  • the juice is still,
  • brix has not moved in maybe 24 hours,
  • temp is 68 °,
  • we can estimate the alcohol content to be maybe 6% to 7% (11 brix we have fallen x ~.55 sugar to alcohol conversion ratio),
  • and we have no added S02 and the barrels are open to the air,
so, pretty vulnerable to bad things.

Here's Ivrson on restarting a fermentation. First step is to warm the wine & the room. Then:
If fermentation does not rebound to a healthy rate after the temperature is raised to 70 F, rack and aerate the wine, adding yeast extract and yeast hulls. Add a teaspoon of balanced yeast food such as Fermaid. It would also be advisable to reinoculate with a fresh starter of a vigorous and alcohol tolerant yeast, such as Prise de Mousse and to maintain rom temperature . Wyeast's Eau de Vie (Vintner's Choice0 might be even better because it is vigorous and ferments up to 20% alcohol. Don't be tempted to add diammonium phosphate late in fermentation because the yeast can make very little use of it, and it could taint the wine.
If that fails, he goes into more drastic steps.
Heaters, please.

1 comment:

Bernardo said...

I have a space heater I can bring over. Ceramic block with many built in shut-off mechanisms.