2011 Barbera Day 2

9 A.M.

No cake but some good fizz, and the must is emanating warmth. Poised for take off. Still smelling sweet and fruity, with hints of alcohol in the air.

9 P.M.

3 inch cake thick enough so that the surface was drying out. Lots of bubbles when I punctured the cake. Big fruit, with the alcohol coming on. Big night tonight I'm guessing.

2011 Muscat, day 7

(142 hours into the 2011 fermentation, we're just reaching the brix level that was reached after only 69 hours of 2010 fermentation.  We be happy!)

6:00

• Room 73, must 70, Brix 5.5.
• 134 hours in, 75% of the sugar converted.
• Changed ice: will ice maybe twice again?

18:00

• Room 74, must 70, Brix 4.5.
• Have switched to the short scale hydrometer.
• Iced.

Brix, yeast, action

Laura and I destemmed until we couldn't take it anymore and then measured the specific gravity of the must: 1.010, which predicts an alcohol content of about 13.5. Nice neighborhood to be in--we have bottles from Sicilia, the Rhone and Argentina that are all 13.5. We stirred in the yeast liquid and noticed there was already a little fizz to the must. I'm guessing this wine will be quick out of the gate.

Barbera Redux

Gina and I drove out to see Mrs Lapide today. We bought 6 crates of barbara, 4 of grenache and 2 of alicante--we're aiming for 30 gallons this year.

We thought about making other wines, but we're loving last year's barbara--I think I told everyone that because Mrs. L only had 5 crates of barbera last year, I stepped up the amount of grenache and alicante in the mix. The grapes are delicious. The barbara is a little sweeter than it was last year.

We crushed at about 2, and Laura and I will add the yeast tonight after a destemming fest--a mix of water, 3 envelopes of Montrachet Red Star and a half cup of sugar.

2011 Muscat, Day 6

6:00

• Room 74, must 72, Brix 9.
• Still very frothy, happy, sloppy, mucky.

Just a side observation: we put the frozen balloons into gallon freezer bags and these go into the must.  When the ice has melted, the bags are stretched large with gas: does it come from the melting ice, or  is CO2 or something else permeating into the bag from the must or the headspace above it?

Also, email to & from B yesterday: sounds like he's buying his grapes today, and might be posting here about the makings on Staten Island.

15:00

• Room 74.5, must 70, Brix 7.
• Will be wanting the short scale hydrometer soon.
• Massive ice infusion delivered by Mihai.

Uh Oh No. 1, day 4

After the bee stings Monday night I became a little less enamored of this project.  Tuesday Morning, about 58 hours after the berries had been crushed, and about 36 hours after chapitalizing them and starting fermentation, I took the new free run juice and put it into a 5 gal carboy and a runnover 1 gal jug.  I'm storing them both outdoors, with a wet T-shirt over the 5 gal.  They're fermenting away like nuts.  I'm looking at the whole thing now as an excuse for the physical exercise of hauling the skins back and forth etc., and not much more.  No measurements, all the best juice run off for the regular wine before starting, chapitalizing, not enough subsequent skin contact afterwards (I'm guessing) to go copper… And, really, the bee-stings still hurt.

2011 Muscat, day 5

5:30

• Room 74, must 70+, Brix 12+.
• Not much drop in the Brix since early last evening, but fermentation is bubbling steadily along.  No worries.Compare it to last year, when day 5 started at 0.2 Brix and ended below zero and our transferring to topped up carboys!
• Swapped ice.  A few of the balloons have broken in the freezer but we likely have enough to get through - will ask C&M to put a few that we can't fit into our freezer into theirs.

A little geeky interlude: 2010 and 2011 Muscat comparisons.

18:30

• Room 74, must 72, Brix 9.5.
• Below the half-way mark.  Will continue to add ice, but heat should be less of a challenge.

2011 Muscat, Day 4

6:00

• Room 74, must 74, Brix about 16.
• Bracing for a big burn.  Mihai has been making ice, and we'll add that to ours. 
• Brix was 18 fizzy in hydrometer, closer to 15 after agitating the juice, and close to 18 by refractometer - I'm calling it 16.

12:15

• Room 74, must 71, Brix 15.
• Maybe our first ever cooling of the must while there's still lots of sugar?  We had a lot of ice in there.  And now we've added a bunch of Mihai and Colleen's ice balloons.  Shoot for the 60's!?

16:15

• Room 74, must 64.  Did not take Brix, but very active.
• Not a typo!  I took the temp twice, to make sure I hadn't lost the ability to read the thermometer.  We added a heck of a lot of ice at lunch time, and almost all of it was balloon block and we broke the temperature barrier.  Next year, for sure, we'll arm ourselves with lots of balloons before before we press.
• It also occurred to me, as I was just paging through Warrick, that next year we should have a big primary fermenter handy at destemming - not to ferment in, but to hold the destemmed grapes so that the folks working the destemmer can go full speed, and not wait for the folks operating the press.

19:20

• Room 75, must 68, Brix 13.
• All ice melted, and added four balloons - not likely to last until morning.
• Day four falls have been 1 to 2 Brix every 6 hours or so. 

2011 Uh Oh No. 1: Bees in my pants

After we tended to the Muscat juice last night I went out back to punch down Uh Oh No. 1.  I didn't take a flashlight this time.  Buggy and dark.  Even in the dark I could see that the birds that are feeding in the concord arbor are flying to the crabapple, sitting directly above Uh Oh No. 1, and pooping purple on it.  And why not?  Took off the lid, punched down, took no readings but satisfied myself that fermentation is active, put everything back together and went inside.

In the kitchen and, Ow!  What's that?  I slap at my knee and feel something pretty big inside my pants  and Ow!  Jeez!, slap slap slap and an effin' honey-bee falls out the leg of my pants!   SLAP SLAP SLAP and another one falls out!!  Ten seconds later I've kicked off my shoes and stripped off my pants and am calling Lori for a pair of tweezers so I can pull out the stingers.

And so, fellow wine makers, even though I got out of bed an hour before light this morning, I'm waiting...

2011 Muscat, Day 3

5:00

• Room 74, must 72, Brix 22.  
• Very effervescent, fermentation has taken hold.  So many bubbles in the juice that it pushed the hydrometer up above 25!  I had to shake the sample for a while to deaden it, and the reading went to 22.5.  I double checked with the refractometer and got 22.
• Changed ice - am now using bagged cubes and ice packs together - will add more in a few hours.  Will need to start buying bags of ice to keep up, I think.  Temp will be critical by next measure.  And it's going to be warm today - around 80: cellar might go to 76.

14:00

• Room 74, must 72, Brix +20.  
• Fermentation is starting to sizzle but temp is not.  All of the morning ice was melted: replaced it with 2 1-quart blocks of ice.  Time to ask the team to freeze water-balloons.  

21:00

• Room 75, must 72, Brix 18.
• Ferm is rocking.  The 2 PM ice is melted and we've replaced it again.  Down 4 Brix in 16 hours.  Whoa, Nelly.  

2011 Uh-Oh No. 1

Lori and Steve were speaking to Ben Hagen and brought the topic around to ramato style wines.  And of course, Slope Cellars has lots of wines made by fermenting white grapes on their skins.  A pact was made: next year 11th Street makes some copper wine, next year Ben builds a cold-box to grow winter vegetables, and a trade gets made.

Then we came back to the house, and there were the plastic garbage bags filled with the pressed Muscat berries.  As soon as Lori wasn't looking S hauled a 50 gallon fermentation barrel from the cellar to the back yard, hauled all the pressed grapes to it and into it, added a gallon of water, took brix readings (very low!  Guess all that sugar went with the juice), added enough sugar to raise the whole stew by maybe 5 Brix, mixed and pitched 20 g of yeast.  The whole rig is in the back yard, under the crabapple.  We're talking very off-the cuff here.  The skins were already offered for compost and were one day from being trash - what the heck.  Maybe it'll be drain cleaner when it's finished, or maybe it'll be the base for some fortifying.  It'll definitely be odd.

 (It's in about as shady  spot as I can get it and still be able to go in and out of the barrel without dropping leafs and branches into it.  The mosquito and fly activity in the back is gruesome right now, what with all of the rain, and with all of the rotting concord grapes in the arbor.  I probably got 20 bites in the time it took to snap this pic and a few others.  That's a 5 gal bucket of meta, with my punch-down masher, sitting on top of the barrel, holding the lid in place in case any critters get curious.)

2011 Muscat, day 2

6:00

• No wild fermentation (I added a bit more S02 last evening to try to prevent it).  Brix 23 by the hydrometer, which jives pretty closely with the refractometer readings we've taken up until now.  (I didn't try to recalibrate the hydrometer.)  
• Room temp 74 and must temp 71.  I added a couple of ice packs in anticipation of adding the yeast shortly.  Accuvin put acid at 7, but these tests expired 5 months ago (sigh).  Will order new.  Last year's juice had higher acid, but was also less sweet.  
• No gradations on the side of the 100 liter poly tub (note to self: make some) but I'm estimating about 70 liters.  Have mixed 15 g of the usual Montrechet Red Star with about 12 oz of water and will pitch now.  

15:00

• Room 75 F, must 71 F, no visible or audible fermentation going on.  Ice packs were must-temp, replaced with 2 cold ones.
• Brix 23.  Last year big-ferm slammed us between the 12 and 24 hour marks and burned away more than a third of the sugar in that time.  Should do what we can at this evening's reading to really force the temperature down.

21:00

• Room 74, must 71, Brix 23.  15 hours since pitching.  Audible popping has begun, but no noticeable CO2.  Added ice to existing, which had not yet warmed fully.

Fabu day 1 2011 Muscat

Steve, Mike & Mihai headed to Terminal Market by 8:30 or so and bought 10 lugs of Muscat Alexandria from Mrs. Lapide - 42# each, $43 each.  We also took a wander through TPS for supplies, but didn't buy anything except some more meta. 

Back to the ranch.  Lori was already moving things around, and Colleen soon came over.  We set up out front, same as last year.

We fell into a nice flow, destemming and pressing.  Looks like we have close to 70 liters of juice to ferment.  Steve wanted to take the (still very juicy) pressed grapes and set the up to ferment on their skins outdoors, but just got too pooped to pop.  During the work Danny L came to help, as did Becky & Sienna.  By one or so we were largely cleaned up, and the oven was lit for winemakers' pizzas (and plenty of wine).  Others joined us and lunh rolled on for a few hours.

(Mihai just sent a bunch of pics and I'm inserting this one here...)

Stats:
2:30 PM - Brix 22.5 (a full Brix higher than last year), Ph 3.59, SO2 about 12.  Added more SO2 in the early / mid evening - am not going to add yeast until the AM.  Then we'll start the battle to keep things cool.

When we headed to Market S was thinking that we'd but the juice into separate carboys that we might be able to set into icewater tubs to keep things cool.  Both engineers, though felt certain we'd have a better shot at cooling if we stayed in a single vessel, so everything is in the 100 liter poly.  I've got a bunch of icepacks ready, and should probably start freezing some plastic milk cartons.

Reviewing 2010's Muscat ramble

(1) Sep 25: M&S to market, purchased 8 42 # lugs Muscat Alexandria at $40 per.  Brix between 21 and 21.5, acid at 7.5, cellar temp 76 F.  P to house, worked with L to set up gear.  Destemmed and pressed, 60 liters of juice in a 100 liter poly tank, 72 F.  Pitched 3 x 1.5 g in 3/4 c warm water at 3:45 PM.  By 11 PM must raised to 74 F.

(2) Sep. 26: 8 AM room 74 F, must 75 F, added ice packs to juice.  2:30 PM must at 75 F and Brix down to 15!  WTF!  Going much faster than wanted.  More ice packs added.  8 PM down to 12.5 Brix, best laid plans have gone astray.   Outdoor temps are cooler, and am really thinking about trying to bring the tank outside.

(3) Sep 27: 5 AM, room 71 F, must 74 F, 8 Brix.  More ice, fans.  3 PM room 72 F, must 75, ice.

(4) Sep 28: 5:45 AM room 72 F, must 76 F, 4 Brix, switch to short scale hydrometer.  Fermentation still very active, very yeasty.  9:30 PM room 72 F, must 75 F, 1,5 Brix.  At this point I'm noticing how much skin is in the tank and vowing to not repeat this (at least not by accident) in 2011.  Ferment less active, less yeasty.

(5) Sep 29: 5:30 AM, room 72 F, must 73 F, 0.2 Brix.  Lots of CO2, same milky yellow as 2009.  8 PM, room 72 F, must 72 F, -1 Brix.  L and S transferred juice to carboys: 5 + 5 + 3 +1.  NB: the poly was too heavy to lift into a good siphoning position, and the spigot too large for a hose, so the first 5 g cb was pailed from the poly to into a funnel - lots of air.

So, 2010 was super-fast. 
The hope for 2011 is to keep it cooler and slower, and to do the primary ferm in carboys with much less airspace than the poly tank, in hopes of keeping more of the nose.

Confirmed: Muscat @ Lapides this Weekend

I spoke to Mrs. Lapide, and when I asked if she's have Muscat this Saturday she said "We'd better!  They only just started arriving."

Titrets, refractometer and Ph meter at the ready: let's make wine!

2008 Cab S / 2009 Merlot blended

The last 5 gallons of the 2009 Merlot (which was a blend itself) went into the 15 gallons of 2008 Long Island Cab. S, that's been in our 100 liter tank.  With any look we can rig up some fittings to bottle from the spigot at the bottom of the tank.  The more sooner the more better, and then we can move 15 gallons of the 2010 Primitivo into the tank.

And, speaking of the Primitivo - I just bottled 3 gallons.  It still smells poopy, and I still like it. 

2011 - Gearing up

The group started circulating mail today.  Leaning toward:

Muscat - even more of it than 2010 (336 #, which was twice as much as 2009).  We'll look at dividing the wine into a white in the fashion we've been making it, and a ramato.  (We only see references to pinot grigio made as ramato, so the group is hedging its bets.)  Maybe we can ferment the white in carboys and the ramato in a small poly tank.  And of course, we might want to learn a bot more: references to ramato really make the process sound more like rosato than  red wine-making.  The phrase "in contact with the skins for some time", as opposed to just plain old done-as-red.

Red - if Mark Snyder of Angel Share / Red Hook will still have us, we'd look for east end Cab. Franc and Merlot grapes.  We'd look for a total quantity like last year: 576 #.  What ratios would we blend these at?  Commercial wines are all over the map on this.  My guess is we would make the wine separately, and bench blend to our heart's content.

S also made a run to terminal market today for more bottles (to help make room for the new wine) and generally take the pulse.  No grapes at all - none shipping sooner than the coming week: slow year in CA.