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?