2013 Muscat, day 72, Dec 2 2013: testing

I tested the third of the wine that had the least topping off when we racked off the gross lees in October.

• SO2: 30/35 ppm.  Leaving this alone.  That's about the same reading I got on October 9 from the CB with the middling amount of topping off.  I'm questioning whether the Titrettes need replacing - I didn't mark them for an expiration date.  Might not have wondered this if not for the acid test, below.  The only SO2 adjustment so far was on Sep. 22 when I added about 30 ppm to everything.
• Acid: Well, the chem kit I have was purchased 13 months ago.  Maybe I need to change it.  If that's not the case, then our acid is off the scale - somewhere above .75% tartaric / 4.8 ppt sulphuric.  I vote for changing the chemicals.  We were at 4.32 on Sep. 24.
• pH: 3.43.  Sep. 24 measurement was 3.38.

2013 Muscat, Dec. 1 2013, day 71: 2nd racking

Moving the racking along.

I decided to keep the individual carboys consistent and not blend them together this racking, even though they all were topped off with different quantities of prior years' wines.  My expectations were for pretty minimal loss - the lees seemed a half inch thick and had something of a shaggy, dusty look, rather than a solid muddy look.  And I planned to test and taste a little later in the day.

OK, so something happened that I'd never seen before.  Two of the CBs, which had an inch or two of ait in their necks, overflowed their target CBs of (theoretically) exactly the same size.    Either they aren't really the same size, or a hell of a lot of air whipped up the volume of the wine (and that just didn't happen).  As I'm writing this now I realize that the reason I needed as much topping at the last racking was that I went into these slightly larger CBs from smaller ones.  I hate the idea, but I'll probably go back and measure and label all of the vessels.  Drag.

The third CB went into one of the two now cleaned source CBs.  Got an expected amount of loss.  Instead of topping off with old wine I used glass beads to displace about 200 ml. volume.

KC₄H₅O₆

In cleaning the CBs I saw that what I took to be dusty was actually lots of potassium bitartrate crystals.  We've gotten this in our Muscat before when storing it for long periods in the fridge, and I've seen it in commercial wine, but I don't think I've seen it before in our carboys.  I don't think it has to do with the cellar temperature, which is no different than in past years, but with our raising the acid in the must with tartaric acid this year, which we haven't done before.  So maybe when I test SO2 later today, it'll be interesting to test acid and pH, too.

Diversion: sage liqueur

Decided to put another bottle of the 2011 Muscat to good use - a double batch of the sage liqueur from Mielasch.  Amazing sage from our last market trip, clove, and lemon peel all steeped in wine and distilled alcohol for a few weeks, then strained and sweetened and stowed away to mellow a bit.  First taste might be OK at Xmas or the New Year.  Used vodka as the alcohol base.

2013 Muscat, day 35, Oct 26 2013: lemon light

The light on day 35.

The wine is now translucent enough that what comes through it is lemon colored.

The glass beads have arrived, and given how little lees seem to be falling out of the wine it looks like we've got enough to avoid going into smaller containers or topping off with other wine at the next racking.

Heat's been on in the house the mornings of this last week.  Doesn't seem to be affecting the cellar much, but I should probably place some reflecting insulation in front of the wine to bounce away any direct heat coming from the furnace.

2013 Muscat, day 28, Oct 19 2013

No ring of co2 bubbles at all.
Wine has cleared to the point that you can see about half way through it - you can see the mound in the center of the bottom of the vessel.

I ordered about 2 liters volume of glass beads earlier this week from MoreWine, hoping we'll have little enough lees in the next racking to let us stay in 3 cb's and use the beads rather than topping off with more finished wine. Looks hopeful.

2013 Muscat, day 26, Oct 17 2013

11 days since coming off the gross lees, and maybe twice that long again until the next racking.  Slightest small bubbles in at least one of the carboys.  The color is shifting quite a bit, but still far from clear.  Moving from Apple and Eve to Martinelli's.

2013 Muscat, day 20, Oct 11 2013

Single line of c02 bubbles, and no action in the airlock.

A wee layer of sediment forming.

These pics were taken very close with a flash and don't give a true indication of color, but show pretty well how little fermentation is still happening and how little sediment is forming close to a week after coming off the gross lees.  The wine is more translucent than the pics suggest, but still far from clear.

2013 Muscat, day 18, October 9 2013

* 6:00: decided to take titrette reading from the cb that received the middling amount of top-off wine. Sample went clear at between 30 and 35 ppm. I only drew off 5ml for the test, but that was clear in the glass. (Still cider opaque in bulk.)

2013 Muscat, day 16, Oct 7 2013

* 6:30: fine co2 bubbles. Cider color now in the top quarter of each carboy.

Kelly Chylinski of Presque Isle got in touch to answer my query re whether bentonite could / should be added when racking off the lees as Ivers suggests, rather than at a subsequent racking.  The answer: doing it coming off the lees would be fine.  No opinion given re which would be preferable.  And so we swing.

* 20:00: Cider color extends down to the middle rib of the carboys.  No other obvious change.

2013 Muscat, day 15, Oct 6 2013 - off the gross lees

We took the wine off the gross lees this morning.

Fine bubbling still happening in the wine about to be racked.

Coming off the gross lees.

1.5 liters of mud in the third cb we racked.

I'd been fretting about whether to fine with bentonite at this step or to wait, as we did in 2011, until the next racking.  (We did not fine in 2012.)  I finally decided to write Doug at Presque Isle and see how he weighs in on the topic.  Two other things let me cool my heels, too.  First, I found some 2011 bottles of Muscat that had flocculation in them (and that's what you would have expected the bentonite to prevent), whereas I don't remember seeing protein haze in other years' bottles.  I can't remember what the 2nd thing is right now, but I'm sure it was life changing.

We went from 5gal + 5gal + 5gal + 0.5gal to 5+5+5, but we did that by distributing 2.75 liters of 2011 (clear - I was forbidden to use the hazy) wine across the carboys to top up.  (It's mixing oz and ml to get there, but we essentially lost 1.5 liters to the lees in each of the large carboys.)  If I'd been a little more quick we might have had the old wine evenly distributed across the carboys, but as it happens the have .5, .75, and 1.5 in them respectively.  We'll combine them at the next racking to even things out.  And we'll watch them to see if the behave differently than each other: if they do we'll recombine them sooner.

Will check so2 a little later in the day when things are a little more settled.

* 21:30: kind of gratifying to see settling happening quickly.  The top four inches of each cb is apple cider colored, and everything below is more milky.

2013 Muscat, day 14, Oct 5 2013

The wikipedia article on Muscat of Alexandria says that Cleopatra drank wine made from these grapes grown on the island of Samos.

No significant changes.  Maybe a little banding of the color - the wine toward the neck of the carboy looking more like juice than sherbet.  Very fine co2 bubbles running up the glass.  A rare movement in the airlock.

Getting the wine off the gross lees should be this weekend or next.  We should probably seize the day while we have the time.  Doing it this weekend matches what we did in 2012 (day 15).   In 2011 we racked off the gross lees on day 11 (October 4) and we racked again & fined on November 13, 40 days and 40 nights later (day 51.)

Iverson (Iverson, Jon. Home Winemaking, Step-by-step: A Guide to Fermenting Wine Grapes. Medford, OR: Stonemark Pub., 2009. Print) fines during the first racking off the gross lees.  I kind of like that idea, though we've never done it that way before - it really pushes the schedule forward.  If we do that we'd use bentonite, and we'd prep it today / tonight to use tomorrow.

2013 Muscat, day 12, Oct 3 2013

* 6:30: slow, occasional bubbler action. Small bubbles running up the cb's but no froth in the neck except at the edges where the bubbles surface. Some of the creaminess of the color is gone, though the must is still completely opaque.

Last year we racked off the gross lees on day 15. Possible we'll do the same this year.  Good to see the color we were at when we did it last.

* 23:30: Stiller and stiller.  The most active of the cb's is one pop per minute or two.
We're a few days into a warm spell, and the next three will hit 80 F or so.  Happy it started after the big sugar drops happened.  Haven't been taking the cellar temp, but it ain't cool.  Laid new icepacks between the cb's this morning and again just now.

2013 Muscat, day 11, Oct 2 2013

* 6:30: The most active of the cb's is bubbling every 5 or 6 seconds, though you can see the constant stream of bubbles rising along the walls of each vessel.  Brix is at -1.3 in the one that I checked.

2013 Muscat, day 10, Oct 1 2013

* 6:00: Only the thinest collar of bubbles where yesterday there was still a shaving cream pie full of foam.  Still steady bubbling.

In 2012 we racked the Muscat off the gross lees on day 15, and lost about a full gallon of mud in doing so.  (Post is here.)  This year we'll be starting a few liters shy of last year, and will probably want to top off with some of last year's wine in order to land at 3 full 5 gal cb's.

I also took a peek back at last year's day 9 entry - brix reading was 0.1 lower than this year.  For all the fuss and muss attempting to slow the fermentation, when you don't have commercial equipment the grapes decide.  Or maybe we just need more fuss and muss?

2013 Muscat, day 9, Sep 30 2013

* 6:30: brix at 0.9, bubbling strong but foaming low, I decided to top off the carboys. Ended with 5+5+5+growler. Have arranged the cb's so I can stack ice packs between them.

* 21:00: One bubbler fouled and cleaned, all three firing steadily.  May test sugar level again in the morning for yucks, but things are on auto-pilot now.  Put fresh ice packs between the cb's.

2013 Muscat day 8, Sep 29 2013

A morning without measurements.  All of the cb's are going at their own rates, with the last of them - the one that got the tilted out lees - continuing to go whacky and foul the bubble.  Will clean that bubbler one more time, but if it happens again I'll try to draw dome of the must off to the other 2 cbs and see what the wild jimmies do there.  Will shoot for an afternoon brix reading.

Bubblers cleaned and burping.

* 15:30: Cleaned the bubblers of all three cb's - two of them, the first and third, were fouled with yeast & foam.  How much CO2 is still getting generated?  It took less than a second for the replaced bubblers to start burping.  If you click on the image and look at it full-sized you can see all the CO2 bubbles making their way up the side of the glass and into the foam.

For the heck of it I also wedged an icepack between the cb's.  I guess that means the middle one gets a double-dose?  Maybe I'll arrange then into a triangle.

*23:30: All ditto, looking very good, put some more ice packs between the cb's but did not take their temp or any other readings.  All three cb's bubbling strong.  Tomorrow might be a good day to further top the cb's and maybe transfer what remains in the gallon to a growler.

2013 Muscat, day 7, Sep 28 2013

* 0:30: Room 70, Must 70, Brix 5.5.  Giant drop in the last 18 hours.  Surface of the must is now back to fine fizz rather than the giant foam.  Will need to move the must to carboys in the morning.  For now have removed the paddle and swapped the ice packs.  Not expecting much temperature rise.

* 6:30:  Is it at this time every year that I say that the exact numbers I out down in these notes are not as meaningful as the trends and that I take the measurements in a consistent way?  Should be.

Room 70, must 68, brix5.  Or let's call it 5 for now.  After being as low id it showed this morning I decided to use the short scale (5 to -5) hydrometer, but that showed us clearly over 5.  So I decided to check both hydrometers with distilled water.  Short scale showed the water at 0.1 brix, regular (30 to -3) hydrometer showed it at -1 brix.  I could go back and adjust all the notes (no) or do a corrected chart (probably), but foe now calling it +5 seems fine.  Whatever the exact number, late today seems right for the transfer to carboys.

* 16:30: Well, with the room and must at 71 F and the brix at 4.5 on the short scale hydrometer, and the likelihood of not being around on day 8, I transferred the must from the tank to three 5 gallon carboys and a 1 gallon jug.  I tried to leave a good deal of space in each vessel so that the ferm could foam up without fouling the airlocks (and I'd use the gallon to top off when things died down) but in the last cb, which got more than it's fair share of the lees, the airlock was getting fouled within 30 minutes.  Made some adjustments.  Everything is cleaned and stowed.

2013 Muscat day 6, Sep 27 2013

* 6:00: Room 70, must 69, brix 9.
No bubbler action but a 25%, 3 brix drop in the last 13.5 hours.  The yeast is in a very thick, coating state.  It was sloppy getting the ice packs changed - a little must made it into the sack I keep them in - and the sack was so coated it was tough to hang on to.  (The sacks also always fill with CO2 - what's with that?.)  Also changed the paddle.

We're 106 hours in and at 9 brix; last year at 110 hours we were at 7 (at 97 h we were at 8 b).  We're slower this year, and a good deal cooler.  From hour 27 until 133 when the must went into carboys the temp averaged 72.8 in 2012.  The lowest temp reading during that period was higher than our highest so far this year.  How come?  We iced earlier this year; we're using a cooler temp yeast; there was a warm-spell during the 2012 fermentation week, though not until day 4 or 5.  Your choice, skill or luck.

Something I haven't seen talked about in any of the home winemaking books is the fact that brix readings in a hydrometer will change over the course of minutes with actively fermenting must.  In the first stages of active fermentation it seems to me that the hydrometer will sink in the sample after a few minutes as surface bubbles die away.  In middle stages where there's lots of CO2 being generated the hydrometer will rise in the tube - sometimes by a lot - as the bubbles adhere to the device and lift it.  For this morning's sampling, 5 minutes after having settled at 9 brix, the device raised to 15 brix.  Twirling it to shake off the bubbles let it back down.

2013 Muscat, Day 5, Sep 26 2013

* 6:30: The bubbler on the big poly tank is active for the first time - that cheered me as soon as I walked into the cellar.
Room 69.5, must 69, brix 13.  Drop of 1.4 or 2 brix in the last 11 hours, 10% of what was there.
Changed the paddle and ice packs.  Forecast is for an outside temp of 72 today.

At what brix do we want to transfer to carboys this year?  Last year we did it on day 7 at 4.9 brix.

*16:30: Had to jiggle the schedule around a bit, so we're early.  Room 70, must 68, Brix 12.  No bubbler action, but the foam is plenty active.  Left the packs in place but swapped the paddle (thank you Doyle).  

2013 Muscat, Day 4, Sep 25 2013

Hubba hubba at 5:30 AM

* 5:30 AM: Room 70, must 69, brix 15.  Love it!  Fermented off 25% of the sugar in 10 hours but the temperature of the must is slightly below that of the cellar.  The blessing of the ice packs?  The D47 yeast?  The phase of the moon?  Crickets in the house?  I vote for all four.  We're charting very differently than last year.  Maybe I can work that up later today.

Replaced the paddle and the ice packs.

(Actually, now that I look, the charting of the temp is very different, but not the brix.  Last year at 61 hours we were at 15 brix and 73.5 F; this year at 57 hours we're at 15 brix and 69 F.)

* 19:30: Here's a real puzzler: room 71, must 71, brix 14.5.
Virtually no sugar drop in the last 12 hours, after a 5 brix drop in the preceding  10 hours.  Is D47 that fussy about temp?  Was I just amazingly fuzzy-headed when I took the morning readings?  Surface foam & action much like the morning.  Can't quite figure it.  Put in a couple of fresh ice packs.

* 22:30: The cellar is still at 71 F.  Mihai brought over a fresh ice paddle and we added that.  It's pretty warm out - 64 F - and there's not a lot of hope for the cellar temp to drop.

2013 Muscat day 3, Sep 24 2013

* 6:30 AM: Well, not stunning footage, but in any case you can see the active CO2 bubbling at the side of the paddle.  Houston, we have ignition.  Very visible and audible.

Room 70, must 70, brix 21.  The must was so carbonated it took a while to get the brix reading. The paddle was completely melted and I replaced it with a new one plus an ice pack.  Unfortunately I know we won't be around in the afternoon to refresh these, so we might expect to see the temp spike today.  Last year's experience was that when the wine moved from 22 brix to 20 brix the temp moved from 67.5 to 72.  Buckle up.

* 8:00 AM: had a great interaction with one of the Sanitation guys on the block. I was leaving late and they were just about at the house.  I waited so I could apologize for the bags of skins, which were heavy & sloppy.  He asked if they were filled with dirt, and I said No, grape skins from making wine.  Then he told me how he used to be on a route in Dyker Heights and there was one old Italian guy who was a winemaker and who would give hime a bottle each year.  Strong stuff! That's when I pledged mine.  My new friend helped me bring the sacks out of the yard that I was going to hold back until Friday.

* 6:30 PM: Room 70+, Must 70, brix 20, ph 3.38, sulfuric acid 4.32 ppt.
Putting your ear to the tank is like listening to the ocean in a shell if the ocean was made of rice crispies.  Removed the paddle and ice packs - the surface yeast is at that brown viscous coating stage.  Very very happy with where the acid is at - that's exactly what we were aiming for on Sunday night.

* 8:00 PM: No new measurements but we got a fresh ice paddle from Doyle and put it into the must, along with a couple of ice packs.  Should be able to do the same in the morning from our own freezer, and then tomorrow night again from either M&C or Doyle.

Mihai sent a batch of photos from crush-day!  I've posted them in a slideshow over in the right hand column.

And here's a nice comparison against last year.
48 hours into lasy year we'd dropped from 25 brix to 17, and the must was 74 F - we'd really lost control.  48 hours in this year we dropped from 23 to 20, and the must is 70 F.  Mo better, so far.

2013 Muscat, day 2 Sep 23

About 60 l. of juice w/ yeast gathering at 6 AM.

* 6 AM: Room 70 F, must 68 F, brix 23.
This was the first brix reading from the hydrometer. Nice that it's the same as last evening's measurement from the refractometer. The pic is into the opening of the poly tank that we've used for the Muscat the last three years. Clusters of yeast, but no real action yet. Nothing audible. Did not take an acid reading to see what the affect of adding the tartaric was, but will this evening.

*4:30 PM:  Cellar 70, must 69.5.  Surface of the juice if fully colonized now, but still no audible bubbling or visual cues.  Pretty sharp temp rise given no real activity: could be just matching the cellar or it could be there's more activity below the surface than obvious.  This evening will likely add one ice paddle just so we don't see a breakaway.  (Or, on second thought, let's do it now: from the D47 notes, "This strain tolerates fermentation temperatures ranging from 15° to 20°C (59° to 68°F) and enhances mouthfeel due to complex carbohydrates.")

3 years of Muscat fill-line markings.

This pic of the poly was taken when the last readings were made.  You can see the lines of where the 2011, 2012 and 2013 fresh musts reached.  You can also see (and I didn't notice this earlier) that there's enough ferment happening to slightly raise the must above yesterday's fill line.  The wider black lines at the right are the 50 and 75 liter markings.

*9:30 PM: Room 70.5, brix 22, must 67 (maybe).  Hard to say if the must reading was really good or I was too close to the ice paddle, but I'll take it.  Should we push it down further with a little more cooling?  Let it go to morning (when it might be in break-away)?  No noticeable action, but the first fall in brix and the layer of foam up top is like a shag rug.

2013 Muscat: Day 1, Sep. 22, 2013

* 6:30 and the weather is better than we expected: 64 F and a mostly clear sky.  Ground very wet but the air is drier.  Grapes look well protected.  Time to start shuffling.  10 AM is when the cavalry arrives.

The fan-belt and gears exposed.

* 10:00 AM Mihai and Colleen, Peter, then Doyle & Jon Fab.  Equipment out to the street for washing, sorting table set up, grapes moved into position.  The first picked over buckets of grapes are loaded into the destemmer and... Unhhh.  Unhhh.  Unhhh.  Power going to the motor but it's clearly jammed.  15 minutes later the housing was off the fan-belt and gears and everything was being turned by hand, and whatever was the jam let go.  Sealed everything back up & hallelujah.

First focaccia, with grapes in it, out of the oven soon after.  Michael Hearst dropped in and out.  Mike & Pam & Mello after noon.  Steady flow of work until 1 or so, when the third press load was being worked and the rest of the crew turned its attention to cleanup.  By 2 or so we were all in the back yard (now with Heidi R and Stella, too) having lunch that lasted until after 7 PM, with the remainder of the 2012 Muscat and  handful of bottles of the 2012 Merlot and a fe other commercial odds and ends.

The grapes, in quality, were very similar to last year.  Having left them out overnight they were warmer to work with, and I think we got more free run than last year, but the total yield was about 60 liters and slightly less than last year.  We tasted the remaining ramato CB and I decided it was not worth trying to ferment the still juicy skins again their own.  Mike chose ICV D47 for the yeast we'd use.

6:00 PM: tested for acid a couple of times and both times came up a low at 3.76 ppt sulfuric.  So for the first time decided to raise the acid with tartaric - I used 1.5 oz for the 60 liters, looking to raise to 4.2 ppt.  I also added 30 ml 10% meta solution (30 ppm for the volume).  Then mixed 15 grams of the D47 with about 150 ml warm water, let it sit for 15 minutes, and added it to the must.  Basta!

2013 Muscat: camouflaged

504 lbs of Muscat Alexandria waiting for dawn...

Well, we went back and forth on this a little, but ultimately decided to pick up the grapes on Saturday afternoon to work with on Sunday morning, instead of picking them up at the crack-o-dawn Sunday.

12 42# cases from Lapide, $43 each.  They came right out of their refrigerated warehouse and into Mike's rig.  So the first part of our gamble was right: they'd be damned cold when we got them.  But it's much warmer out this evening than it has been the last few nights - 9:45 PM and still 72 F.  Begorah!  Doesn't look like it'll get cooler than the mid 60's, while tomorrow night is supposed to dip into the 40's.  We'll find out by mid-day Sunday where the grapes are at.

We discussed a number of yeasts today that we might use.  We have the standard Montrachet from the market, but Brooklyn Homebrew also has ICV-D47 and QA23.  I think Mike might pull the trigger on one of these.  The only potential worry is whether either needs nutrients and whether either needs low temps for the ferm - looking at last year's figures we were not able to keep the ferm under 73 F once it really took hold.

Flawed and damned good

This evening I roasted tomatoes from Wiklow Orchards in the Big Steel Keg, each halved and squeezed out with a sliver of garlic in them (a la Waxman from the cooking demo at De Gustibus, thank you, Mike), and roasted sweet sausage from Flying Pigs, and then used them as a base for mixing in cavatelli from Russo's. The tomatoes were seasoned with oil and salt and black pepper and red pepper flakes and oregano from the herb pot. Cut up the roasted sausage, cut up the roasted tomatoes, added the not quite finished cavatelli and cooked them together. Did I mention that I threw thyme from the garden into the fire while everything was roasting? More oil. Into a bowl with pecorino Romano. It was good. It was very, very good. But here's why I'm telling you:

Because I had it with the merlot we bottled this past weekend. Chilled. Far effin' out! Flawed in that it's slightly fizzy (slightly) which is no doubt because I added meta before a malolactic ferm could take place. But double-d-f-olicios. (Yes, I've had enough to be tipsy.). Double D!!!

Attending to past sins

5 hours in the cellar this morning and it looks like we're in shape to at least make white wine next weekend - grapes and time providing.

Spent a chunk of time going through past posts and other notes and see that our white wines seem to loose about 10 to 15 ppm per year in carboys. Seems to be true regardless of fermentation with or without skin contact, and whether or not the wine was left on its lees. With zero proof or correlation to the reds I decided to treat them the same way, so where we've raised them by N in the past I figured a year later we were N-10 to 15. Sue me.

Made a new batch of 10% solution, and this time did it in a wide jar so I could easily draw off by the ml instead of pouring out into spoons.

Added 3 ml 10% solution to the 3 gal WA Merlot.
Added 14 ml 10% solution to the fusti of WA Merlot.

Took a taste of Peter's unchapatized 2008 LI Cab S. Remember, these grapes measured a very low brix, and finished ferment in 3 or 4 days. Bernardo and I decided to chapatize and restart the fermentation, Peter didn't. (Lori would have stopped me if I didn't decide so quickly.) Got this wine to my lips and gasped That's Not Wine!! It was something like wine, but I don't know what exactly. Down the drain I sent it.

Then there was a 5 gal CB of my chapatized version. It was wine, but it was not good. Salute!

Then there was a 5 gal mystery CB. Salute!

Then there was a 3 liter growler of 2006 Zin that I decided to re-oak as an experiment, then forgot about. It has a bubbler n it that, no surprise, had gone dry. Salute! and the glass was so stained that I pitched it.

Then there was a 1 gal bottle of the 2009 Merlot / Cab S / P Verdot blend that was overflow from one of the rackings. Another dried out bubbler. Idiot. Too bad, because this was good party wine. Salute!

Then I tasted the two remaining 2010 Primitivo carboys. The first one, honest to god, seemed to have zero barnyard odors and I quickly decided to rack it. The second was not so completely clear (this was the CB I referred to as Charlie in all of my notes) and I decided to add so2 and set it aside. I also decided to raise the so2 in the bottles I was making - I did that by mixing 10% solution with wine, and that adding that mixture to each bottle before filling.

I've got to say that I was not so confident in the lack of barnyard odors during the bottling, while there was lots or aerating happening, but I persevered. It left me less sure of what I would do with the 2nd cb of primitivo, long term.

What was left to deal with was the 8 gallons of cab f. But by now it was 1 PM, I hadn't showered or eaten yet, and called it a day.

2012 Merlot that didn't make it into the fusti... and SO2

Managed to make it into bottles.

Checking through notes I see that we raised this wine and the cab f. by about 30 ppm back on Nov. 11, 2012.  No other meta went into it before bottling.  Eyeballing lots of notes it seems to me that wine we store in carboys in our no-temp-control cellar and with our lackadaisical racking schedule lose about 10 to 15 ppm a year - at least that seems to hold true for the whites with and without skin fermentation.  So I think I'll go forward with bumping anything staying in bulk by about 15 ppm.  (The fact that 1 ml of the solution I mix raises 1 gallon 15 ppm is probably not a coincidence in all of this reckoning.)

2012 Merlot - productive morning

Up early to start condensing things in the cellar.

2 5 gal cbs racking into the fusti.

14 gallons of the 2012 Merlot into a fusti - 13 of it free run, one of it from a mixed free run and pressed cb.  The remaining wine got racked into a 3 gallon cb, and a half dozen 750 bottles: we'll have one this evening with Mihai and Colleen.

My first taste from the 1st carboy got the immediate reaction from me that this is the best wine we've made.  The 2nd carboy I thought was a bit sweeter, and by the third I was lost.  Help!  Someone else taste this wine.  (Or maybe I should again after breakfast.)  Need to figure out what to do re meta.  I'd like to keep this 14 gallons together for at least another half year.

I also racked the 2012 Muscat ramato.  This was left on it's lees for a year.  And there were plenty of them.  I decided to not get too crazy, and just take the top 3 gallons of the 5 into a clean cb.  That worked well - I need to bring the SO2 up - it's down below 15 ppm or so.

Did not touch the 8 gallons of 2012 Cab F.

Unearthed a case of the 1st wine Mike and Pam made at our place - the Syrah from juice.  Awaiting instructions.

Tidied up all of the empties - decided to chuck about a dozen bottles that looked like they got less than a good cleaning back in June after the party.

And I'm hoping to deal with the last of the Cab S. we made with Bernardo and Peter from Long Island grapes back in 2008.  At least 10 gallons of it.

Empty CBs are piling up.

2012 Muscat 90 / 10 bottled

We had one carboy that was 90% straight muscat alexandria, and 10% ramato made from those pressed grapes.  We bottled that this afternoon.  Clean and, at least at room temp, pretty zippy.  Titrette test put SO2 between 25 and 30 ppm and we left it there.  The only muscat now left from 2012 that's not bottled is the straight ramato that I expect to use for vermouth.

Diversion: bitter vermouth based on 2010 Mike & Pam blend

Just before the big new wine party last week I made a batch of vermouth with the same herbs as the March 17 batch and 1.5 liters of Mike & Pam's 2010 Cab S / Merlot / P. Verdot blend.  I barely sweetened the full 2 liters (1.5 wine + .5 fortification): 1 tbsp caramelized sugar, then 2 more tbsp added to the whole.  Peter and I tasted it before the party and agreed that it was fine for confirmed bitters drinkers, but would want more sweetening for general consumption.  I added a 1/4 cup more sugar.  Et voila.

2012 Muscat, 2nd bottling

Nephew Jake and we bottled the next carboy of Muscat on Friday the 7th - good thing we did because we went through four cases of it at the big Puttanesca & New Wine blowout.  Clean as a whistle.  What we have left now is another carboy that is 90% regular Muscat and 10% ramato we made from the same grapes, and another cb that's 100% ramato.

2012 Muscat, 1st bottling

Bottled one carboy of the Muscat this morning, a little late, but then everything with this year's wine making has been between a little late and very late.  It'll be in the bottle just shy of a month when the new wine party comes around.

Very clear, reminds me a lot of last year's wine in taste.  This CB was at about 15 ppm according to Titrettes, and I decided to leave it that way.  Depending on when the other CBs get bottled we can look at boosting things.  No sediments - everything made it to bottle except a cup or two.  26 full 750s.

Diversion: more vermouth from 2012 ramato

I used a gallon of the ramato to make a variation of Yvette Von Boven's vermouth from Home Made.  The main difference is that I boiled the wine / herbs mixture rather than infused it.  And I realize I made it a bit sweeter than the last time I made it (and, purposely, much sweeter than the bitter vermouth I made 2 weeks ago).

• 3 liters 2012 ramato
• Juice and zest of 2 grapefruit
• Zest of 4 oranges
• 4 tsp chopped green herbs (I used rosemary and tarragon this time)
• 16 star anise
• 4 cinnamon sticks
• 32 juniper berries
• 16 cloves

I brought the above to a boil over medium heat.  Once it was really boiling I lowered the heat to a simmer for another 10 minutes, stirring now and then.  Total time on the stove was pretty long.  The longer it went, the less raw and more integrated it seemed.

While the wine cooled I added 180 ml brandy to each of 5 750 ml bottles.  To 4 of the bottles I added a third cup sugar and to one of them I added a half cup.  The sugar all mis-calculated. In YVB's recipes these would have been the amounts for semi and sweet liters, not 750s.  We'll live.

Then I topped the bottles with the strained wine, trying to dissolve the sugar as best I could before corking the bottles and setting them away to rest for a while.

2012 Muscat A racked

Lori and I racked the Muscat A this morning.  Went from 5+5+5 to... 5+5+5, and here's how.

There was very little loss from the first two 5's.  Turned out to be about a quart each.  So we topped from the third 5, and left ourselves about a half gallon shy in the third.  What to top off with?  The 2012 ramato!  First we did a 9 to 1 bench blend, liked it - actually liked it better than the individual wines - and went ahead and topped off.

Why didn't we like the plain Muscat as much as we expected to?  Testing later I found that the cb we were working from was over-sulfited (50 ppm or more).  The ramato Muscat we were working from was around 20.  I need to go back through each cb and see what the deal is.

The wine is clear enough to go to bottle when we like.  But first we figure out the SO2.

2012 Merlot and Cabernet Franc racked

About time.  Racked both red wines and added Barrel Mill spirals of medium toast American oak (6 weeks until neutral).

Lost extremely little - the lees were light and thin in the Merlot, much more mucky in the Cab F. but just not a lot of it.  And a little volume was taken up by the oak.  Merlot went from 5+5+5+3+1 to 5+5+5+3.  Cab F was a little more complicated.  We only had 5+3 to start with, and that turned into 5+2.5 or a little more.  So?  Topped off with the remaining Merlot.  All is well.

Haven't added more SO2 - need to think that through and look at when it was last added.  Should probably up the level, since it will be 6 to 8 weeks before we touch it again.  (Now I see it's been 4 months since last SO2 - will definitely add today or tomorrow.)

The Cab F is candy-apple red, clear, not much nose and a little low in acid.  The Merlot is ruby red, has a real attack when you first sip it - acid is up in the white grape range, and I like it a lot.

Cab F pH was about 3.73 at the end of fermentation and it measured 3.71 today.  Need to look to see if we have a pH for the Merlot from the end of fermentation: I see one from the start, which was only 3.27.  Today it measured 3.77.

2012 Ramato Vermouth - the details

I decided to go with a variation of the Art of Drink description:

• 1.5 liters Ramato
• .5 liters brandy (I used Rodell on Ben Hagen's recommendation) 
• 3 g dried bitter orange peel
• 4 g fresh green green herbs (oregano, rosemary, time)
• 1/4 g chamomile (not that I can mesure below a single gram...)
• 2 g dried wormwood leaves
• 1 g gentian root
• 2 g vanilla bean
• 2.5 tbsp sugar

I added the herbs to 750 ml of the wine, brought it to a boil, simmered for 10 minutes, and set it aside to steep while I...

Combined the remaining 750 ml of wine with the 500 ml of brandy.

Carmalized the sugar and tried to mix it with hot liquid to keep it from solidifying and totally blew it.  Gave up and decided to go with straight sugar.

Readied two 750 ml bottles.

Strained (funnel and cheesecloth) the cooled herb-wine mixture into the wine-brandy mixture.

Added a tbsp sugar to each of the 750 ml bottles, filled them with the vermouth mixture, corked them and lay them in the cellar.  Will let it meld for a week before opening one.

I also had close to 300 ml left. to which I added a proportionate amount of sugar, jarred and put into the fridge.  I'll tast it tomorrow.

All in all, this should be more bitter and less sweet than my last walk down this lane.  No fresh citrus juice or peel, sugar scaled back to dry levels, and more bitter root.  Gonna beg for ice and a twist.

2012 Ramato, making vermouth from it

I've just tasted the 2012 Ramato - it had never been racked, only sulfited.  Pretty good, still between 20 and 25 ppm SO2, nothing obviously evil bubbling up from the lees, but not having stirred them all along I don't want to go poking in there now and release some hidden gaseous deathblob.

So I think I'll use it for a big batch of vermouth.

Last year's vermouth was based on Yvette Von Boven's recipe in Home Made.  Now I'd like to try something where I stew the herbs in wine rather than seep them in the fortification (the latter is YVB's method).

The Art Of Drink has a very nice article.  So does Last Crumb.  And Serious Eats has an article and recipe with a fraction of the ingredients.    The AOD article reminds me a bit more of amari than vermouth, but historic vermouths were more bitter than American ones.  The Last Crumb list would mean visits to one of the remaining herb shops in town rather than just raiding the pantry of Homebrew....

Possible labels

The 2010 Primitivo remains challenging (pooptivo) unless it's let breath for hours.  Thus:

While I was goofing around in that neck of the woods, there's a possible Muscat 2012 label:

But maybe much better this slight alteration of a Rother print:

2012 reds - American medium toast oak

We've gone again with spirals from Barrel Mill.  Medium toast American oak.  Purchased from Presque Isle: our local Brooklyn Homebrew doesn't keep these in stock in the quantity we needed (but will order them if wanted).

As though waking from a deep slumber...

We've set a date for this year's new wine party, and almost forgot that we've been very sorely neglecting that wine.

Settled on american oak medium toast for the 2012 reds and have ordered it from Presque Isle. The reds have been wanting a racking for a while.

Would like to bottle the 2012 Muscat at the end of the 1st or 2nd week of April so that it will have been in the bottle for a couple of months (as opposed to our couple of weeks or even sometimes a couple of days) before our party.  That means there is just about exactly enough time for us to rack and fine with Bentonite if we want to. I think I'd be OK with just racking - we're very clear now.  (Mine might be the minority opinion.)

Root diversion

I had a bottle of Root this autumn and loved it.  Since then I've been hankering to make something like it, and today I gave it a start.

Per the label, Root's ingredients are birch bark, smoked black tea, cinnamon, wintergreen, spearmint, clove, anice, orange, lemon, nutmeg, allspice, cardamom and sugar.  I was able to get the birch bark, wintergreen, and spearmint at Brooklyn Homebrew.  (I love that place.)  The other spices I had.  I bought some lapsang souchong for the smoked tea.

Looking at different sources I decided I should be scared of the tea and not let it steep for more than 24 hours.  Everything else I think I'll keep in for a week and taste.  Maybe I'll let it go another week after that.

I chatted with Patty at Slope Cellars and decided to go with our old friend Spirytus rather than a vodka.  Spirytis is +75% alcohol, and I wanted to end up at something like 40%.  I'm also inclined to sweeten the drink directly with sugar rather than with a simple syrup, so I needed to dilute the booze directly.  I did that with filtered water, bringing it down to between 35% and 40% alcohol.

I started two batches, 12 ounces each.  The only differences between the two are the quantities of tea and cloves.  Let's see what happens.

The ingredients

The A & B jars

The list of ingredients in each jar

2012 Muscat racked - day 96 (Jan 5, 2013)

Happens very year, doesn't it?  We want to rack the Muscat early and bottle it early, and before we know it it's January and the only prior racking was to get it off the gross lees.

Went from 5+5+5+growler to a liter shy of 3+3+3.  So we topped it off with 750 ml of 2011 Muscat and the remainder from an unlabled bottle: I'm guessing 2010 (and the remainder of that bottle will go into taralli tomorrow morning).

Color's good.  Will test later in the day and post the results here.  Didn't really tast yet either - sleep was still in my month.

Should we fine?  I think the group should decide in a week or so, with the notion of doing it soon and then racking & bottling February and March.