2023 Chardonnay - day 19

 

Day 19 color

Hey, kids.  I've been neglecting the blog, but not our juice.

Above is an extreme closeup of one of the carboys.  We've moved from goopy yellowish sherbet (see the day 5 post) to orangeade.  I keep saying, oh, next year I'll get a Pantone(R) deck so I can give more exact descriptions, but that just doesn't happen.

Very few bubbles moving in the juice.  Little-to-no popping of the airlocks.  Lots of settled lees and dead yeast.  Juice is at ambient temperature.

Last year we went 27 days between moving out of the primary fermenter and the next racking.  This year we're so far 14 days out the primary and there's no particular reason to think our next move will not be in about 2 weeks.

2023 Chardonnay - day 5

 0630

Danger!  Danger, Will Robinson!

• Room 72 F; Outside 51 F
• Juice 78F; Brix -0.1

Things have gone insanely fast in the main tank.  So I'm moving everything to smaller vessels where I can top up and not worry about the lack of a CO2 cover.

The end result is 5+5+5+5+3+1.  Each of the fives has been topped up with juice from the original 3 gallon carboy.  The 3 and the 1 are pretty darn muddy with the bottom juice of the original vessels.  For volume comparison, this is 2.5 gallons more juice than last year, from the same weight of grapes.  It's either from the grapes being on the vine for something like 26 days longer this year, or the pretty intense amount of stomping the grapes gt this year - there was an awful lot of free-run juice.  Or a combination of both things.  Who knows?

Pics are of the boys, and of one of my favorite sites: the intense flow of pinprick CO2 bubbles up the glass walls of a carboy.

---

2130

Extremely fine bubbles up the sides of the carboys.  The 5 gallon CBs are popping about 4 to 5 times a minute.  No measurements taken.

2023 Chardonnay - day 4

0000

Surprise!  First bubbler action in the CB, and creepy gaping foam in the primary.   Late and sleepy, did not take any measurements, but the smell of fermentation is all through the house.

 

---

0730

• Room 72 F, outside 45 F
• Juice 84 F, Brix 6 (7 after bubbling rise)

Holy cow!  This is a giant shift.  You could feel the heat emanating from the primary tank as soon as you got near it.  And roughly 66% of the sugars that were present in the wine 24 hours ago got converted.  I'll graph this out and compare it to past years.  Unexpected, but maybe I've just forgotten?

And look how different things are from only 7 and a half hours ago in the primary:

---

2000

• Room 72 F, outside 58 F
• Juice 82 F, Brix 1.9 on the short scale hydrometer

Things are continuing on at a whacky rate.  I wasn't believing my eyes on the regular hydrometer, so I switched to the short scale.  Really is 1.9.  So, again in a 12 hour span 66% of the existing sugar burned off into alcohol.  

2023 Chardonnay - day 3

 0800

• Room 71 F, outside 49 F
• Juice 72 F, Brix 18 (21 after bubbling rise)

Everything's gone shaggy again inside the main tank, and flat (but prickly) again in the CB.  Video is 10 seconds or so of what's happening in the tank.  Maybe too much ambient sound from the fridge and furnace to properly hear the CO2 bubbles bursting.  Play it big and load.  Below the video, the still photo is of the thermometer in the tank, showing, if you look very closely, that the shag, while active, is less than an inch deep.  (Six commas in that last sentence.  Oy.)

---

1300

Suddenly it smells like a big ferment in the cellar.  Amazing change from this morning.

And foam returns to the CB.

---

2023 Chardonnay - day 2

 0730

Cellar 71F, Outside 50 F, juice 66 F.  Brix 22 (maybe 22.5) in the primary tank

No surprises.  No real sign of fermentation yet, and I'm not expecting any until this evening, and would not worry about there not being any until tomorrow morning.

Just for yucks, I used two different hydrometers for the brix reading.  I wanted to test my worry that the older hydrometer's scale has slipped.  Verdict: not so much.  There was maybe half a brix difference between the two, and of course I couldn't say which was more correct.  But the new one has fancy colors, so that's the one I'll use.

1800

Shag, Momma, shag!  Might take a temperature or brix reading later this evening, but both vessels have started to ferment.  The shag in the primary is deep and bubbled, the CB more pf a stout's priest-collar.  Neither is pushing the bubbler, but there's a lot of head-room so I'm not expecting much.

2130

First there is a mountain...

Cellar 73 F, Outside 49 F, juice 70 F.  Brix 20.5/23? in the primary tank

OK, pic below is of the priests's collar that's still in the CB.  But the shag in the primary that was there at 1800 ... disappeared!  In it's place, though, is the fizz of ferm: listen to the audio here.  The big brix span I'm listing is because 20.5 is what I first got in the tube, but after leaving that to tend to the tank temp, when I returned to the hydrometer it had hoisted to 23.  I think that higher reading was due to the fizz / bubbles lifting the hydrometer in the tube.  I trust the low reading.

2023 Chardonnay - Day 1

Tent, sorting table, and all of the small gear up and in place by 7:30 AM.  Didn't rain a drop while putting things out, then there was a short wave of pretty heavy rain.

We're sitting pretty.   Light rain ending around noon.  I think we can be done sorting before then, or mostly so, and bring up the destemmer and press when the rain stops, but your mileage may vary.  Tic tic tic

Luxury.  Thanks for the loaner, Toby.

---

10:15 AM:  Sorting well underway.  8 of us out there now.

---

Well, the rest of the day was a whirlwind.  We had many helpers (see sidebar).  Extremely enthusiastic stompers.  Things moved quickly until we hit the bottleneck of the press, got a good deal of relief by bringing some of the equipment up to the Snyder/Schoeler house to use their hose and wash things down.  

MH [osted a nice video of the work.  Newcomer NN says she took lots of photos.  Will flesh things out over the next few days.

Lots of juice - the most we've gotten from this weight of white grapes.  Too much of rht 100 liter tank, and so we probably have that tank 90% full and have transferred the rest to a 3 gallon carboy for primary ferm.

Winemakers' lunch - at one point we hat 17 people at the table in the backyard.  Went through plenty of what remained of last year's wine.

And at 10  PM or so we pitched 35 grams of Alchemy 1 into the big tank, and 5 grams into the CB.  I'm miffed with myself for being lazy at that point, but I was bushed.  Did use distilled water to hydrate the yeast, but did not bring the water properly up to 105F.  Got some stubborn clumping.  Working on plan B if we don't have some action at 24/36 hours.

2023 Chardonnay - Day zero!

Well, posting dell off for the 2022 Chardonnay, but it was probably the best wine we've made.  I'll try to keep things more up to date for this year's wine.  Maybe I'll post some notebook pages to close out 2022.

Harvest is darned late!  This will be the lates we've started by at least a couple of weeks.  Once again we're going with Chardonnay from the Lanza vineyard in Suissan valley.  12 x 36#.  Sister K has already picked it up and is driving down no.

Must has recommended Alchemy 1 yeast.  Scott Labs says:

ALCHEMY I is a complementary blend of yeast strains that focus on thiol revelation, thiol conversion, and ester production resulting in intensely fruity wines.

• Produces aromatically complex wines that display tropical, citrus, and floral aromas
• Temperature management is essential and therefore barrel fermentation should be avoided
• Blend of S. cerevisiae wine yeast strains
• Developed in collaboration with the Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI), Australia
• Frequently used in: Sauvignon blanc, Chardonnay, Chenin blanc, Riesling, Pinot gris, Rhône whites, aromatic whites, cider
• Alcohol Tolerance: 15.5%
• Nitrogen Needs: MEDIUM
• Temp. Range: 56-61°F

That temp range is pretty darn low - lower than the ambient temp of the cellar.  Hmmm.  Think about that.  Would we be better off keeping the primary ferm tank outdoors in the shade for a week?

And, oh, it's raining.  Hard now.  Forecast is for rain through noon tomorrow, though it looks light.  Delay?