Cellar is 68 F and the juice 63 F - hasn’t yet warmed to the room’s temp, but up 5 degrees in the last 10 hours. Last year, the morning after yeast the room was the 70F and the wine 68F - all in all a cooler start this year, maybe all do to it being so much cooler on crush day this year.
Yeast is starting to colonize in masses on the surface, but no fizzing or visual action yet. Won’t bother with any other readings until things are further along (except maybe acid tonight - just like last year I am nervous about having made an adjustment). If we track to 2013's curve, there might be enough temp rise late today to start cooling the must, and tomorrow night there will be "foam as thick as a shag carpet".
A little more about yesterday.
Just as in 2013, the destemmer was jammed when we first tried to use it. Removed the cover from the fan belt and chain assembly and was again able to free the works by rocking and then rotating the pulley by hand. This evening I’ll disassemble it again and lubricate things with mineral oil.
1830:
Room 68.5 F, must 65 F, SO2 ~15ppm, acid tartaric somewhere between .625 and .800.
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| Yeast action, in main Muscat, about 24 hours in. |
The juice is still completely cloudy, so titrette and acid readings aren't so clear. SO2 looked to be a good deal lower than I was shooting for (though a good deal higher than the plain juice, and given how quickly the fermentation is starting, it's all good in my view). Acid is harder to read than the SO2 and I really can't say whether I had a full color change at 2.5 ml HCl or 2.8 or somewhere inbetween. My aim was to get us to .65 and not above .75. Will test a few times as fermentation progresses. I've also just read that the titration color change happens when the sample hits 8.2 pH - so in theory I could check for the levels with our pH meter instead of visually. Oy.
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| Raisin-stomp is not so far along. |
I've added Mihai & colleen's pics from yesterday to a slideshow in the right hand margin.
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