Looking back at racking histories

Year	Date pressed	Days in primary	Days to next racking	Days to next racking	Days to next racking
2016	10/1/2016	8
2015	9/19/2015	7	11	64
2014	10/5/2014	6	7	75	115
2013	9/22/2013	6	8	56
2012	9/29/2012	7	8	82	78

Holy mackerel.  

Turns out that I've had a language shift that's created a racking shift.  2012 through 2015 when we took the must out of the primary and into carboys it was active enough so that we left air-gaps and a couple days later, as things calmed, we topped them off.  In those years, 7 to 11 days after topping off, we racked the wine and I called that racking it off its gross lees.

2016, with a different varietal, when we went from primary to carboys we topped immediately, and I also dumped the bottom couple inches of must calling them (in my mind) the gross lees.  Whatever!  But it means that if we rack this weekend we'll be at 40 days where we'd previously been at a max of 11.  I'm fine with it - things are looking beautiful.

2015 Muscat, day 87

SO2 at about 20 PPM.  Will have to decide on whether to give a slight boost at racking and then not touch it again, hoping that this will be the last rack before bottling.  Or leave it alone now and test again next week to see what racking did to the wine?

Acid at about .65% tartaric, or 4.16 ppt sulfuric.  Probably slightly higher, but not much, and that puts us just into the bottom of the range we were shooting for.  (Tasting it at 6:30 in the morning on an unwashed tongue I would have guessed higher.)

Color is great.  Nose isn't remarkable.  I think we're somewhere between the very good 2013 and the OK 2014

Put a couple of carboys up on the bench for racking later today.  The thin lees look like they have crystals in them.  We'll know pretty soon.

No measurement of the rosé yet.

2015 Muscat, day 71

Ready to rack.  A few lazy bubbles here and there.  Light lees.  Will test later today and rack before Monday.

2015 Muscat, day 31

Sharply colder outside the last day, 38 at 8 AM, and 68 in the cellar.

A bright light shone into the necks of the carboys shows that there are still fine threads of gas rising through the wine.

Wine put into a test glass isn't yet clear but is showing the familiar dandelion yellow finish.

pH 3.71, SO2 somewhere between 20 and 25 (using year old Titrettes).

Acid measurement was off the charts.  Hmmm.  Let's try new chems.  Saw a similar measurement at this phase last year, but at the second racking a lot of acid had fallen out in potassium bitartrate crystals: let's look for the same this year.

2015 wines, day 22 - off the gross lees

Well, this is later than we've come off the gross lees in a long time - maybe ever?

• 2015 - day 22
• 2014 - day 14
• 2013 - day 14
• 2012 - day 14
• 2010 - day 10

Begorah.  Was there a whiff of the devil in the smallest of the rose bottles?  There was, and I dumped it.  Went from 3+1+.5+1-liter to 3+1+1-liter.

Topped off the Muscat with some of last year's wine and so stayed at 3+3+3.  Some pictures of the mud, below.

Muscat mud

Rose mud

Topping needed for Muscat

2015 wines, day 16

0900:  Hasn't been more than a few degrees above 50 F outside for the last 12 hours, and down to 70 F in the cellar.

Muscat continuing to slow.  (3 BPM)

The Rosé is starting to give a hint of it's color.

2015 wines, day 15

2400: Effin cold and wet.

The Muscat is sharply less active from this morning to this evening - 5 burps per minute.  Still a steady stream of bubbles coming up the sides of the CBs.  Might be fun to try to test acid tomorrow to see if we got to where we were shooting.

The Grenache Rosé over the last couple of days has lost some of it's thick sherbert look - looking more like wine.  Tough to say where exactly it will land when clear, but we are definitely talking a lot of skin color from those 60 hours of contact.

2015 Muscat, day 13

2100: 72 F in the cellar, cool and rainy outside.  Wine -1.1 Brix and still sending up a steady flow of C02.

2015 Muscat, day 12

0600:  74 F cellar, a very wet 72 F outdoors.  249 hours since yeast.

-0.3 Brix in the carboy I've been measuring from most often, and 20 burps per minute.  (22 in the CB I measured from last night that had the higher than expected Brix.).  Time to fully top up and raise the SO2.

Calculator at vinoenology.com

So, added 5.7 ml 10% metabisulfite solution to each 5 gallon carboy.  Topped up with finished Muscat, using about a quart total over the 15 gallons.

Bonus: was finally able to get the drowned black wasp out of the soup!

2015 Muscat, day 11

0600:  69F outside, 74 in the cellar.  225 hours since yeast.

0.9 Brix, still 28 bpm.  Down 0.6 (40%) in the last 11 hours.  Will need to know this evening how we should top up the carboys - one of our wines from the last few years, commercial wine, or water.  Will do the topping & SO2 addition tonight or , maybe more likely, tomorrow morning

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After charting this morning's numbers I went to look at the Brix to alcohol chart that we've pointed to for years on the sidebar - 404,it's gone.  But I found a handful of calculators at WineBussiness.com, and some helpful explanatory information.  Their Brix / alcohol calculator expects for you to know the conversion factor of the yeast you are using.  It's somewhere between 0.55 and 0.64: each gram of sugar will get converted into somewhere between .55 and .64 grams of alcohol.  So far so good.  But Lallemand's spec sheet for EC-1118 doesn't point me to a value I should use.  Which officially indicates, I think, that I shouldn't care about what I can't measure.  But it does make a big potential difference to the alcohol content of the finished wine.

The calculators at WineBusiness are a subset of the calculators at Vinoenology.  Geek heaven!

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2100:  75 F cellar, 73 F outside, 240 hours since yeast.

0.8 Brix from a different carboy, 26 burps per minute.  Hmmm.  15 hours, 0.1 Brix delta (11%).  In the morning I'll go back to the previous CB to see if there's a significant difference.  Used juice from the test CB to level out the three we have cooking.  When we get to less than zero I'll top everything up and add 30 ppm SO2.

2015 Muscat, day 10

0700: Cellar 73 F, 64 F outside.  202 hours since yeast.

2.3 Brix.  Bubblers going strong in all carboys.  Still the priest's collar of foam.  Small absolute numbers but big percentage - down 1.2 Brix (34%) in the last 13 hours.

1900:  Cellar 74.  214 hours since yeastadooddle.

1.5 Brix, 28 burps per minute.  0.8 absolute drop, 34%.

2015 Muscat, day 9

0700:  72 in the cellar, 57 outside.  178 hours since yeast.

3.9 Brix.  Each CB has a priest's collar of white foam, bubbling steadily.  Down 0.8 Brix (17%) in the last 15 hours.

In 2014 I didn't take many readings after coming out of the primary on day 7, at which point the juice was 6 Brix versus 4.7 this year, but I did note that in the evening of day 9 we were at 0.6.

1800:  189 hours since yeast
3.5 Brix.  Samples from different CB, so might get some inconsistency.  Down 0.4 (11.4%) in the last 11 hours.

2015 Grenache Rosé, day 8

1500:  162 hours since yeast.

Brix -0.2 (that's minus, not dash)
Made up a 10% meta solution and raised all of the vessels by 30 ppm SO2.  Counting on this being enough to halt any malolactic fermentation.  Am also thinking about surrounding the cbs and jugs with water & an ice paddle for the next few days.

2015 Muscat, day 8

0800:  155 hours since yeast

63 F outside, 72 F in the cellar.  Wine is 76 F, and the brix is somewhere between 5 and 6 - the long scale hydrometer says 5, the short scale says no-way and probably 6.  So that's a drop of somewhere between 1.0 (15.4%) and 0.5 (7.2%) in the last 11 hours,

Fine white, thin foam.  Today should be the day to transfer the wine into topped off vessels.  Shooting for 15 or 16 gallons.

Quick chart of Brix levels since adding yeast.  At 33 hours switched from refractometer to hydrometer.  A lull in the readings between 48 hours and 73 hours, though the ferment was obviously strong at that point.


1600:  163 hours since yeast.
Alright, I did it.  Brix at about 4.7.  Moved the wine into 3 5 gallon CBs, each a liter or less shy of full.  Will let things bubble for a while, and then either condense or top off the vessels with wine from last year or the year before.

Lots of yeast mud went in - very little left in the primary fermenter.  And the black wasp is floating at the top of the last of the 3 carboys...

2015 wines, day 6

0600:  It's 60 F outside and 73 in the cellar.  105 hours since yeast.

• Muscat

73.3 F, 3.59 pH, 11.5 Brix.  

Down 1.5 B in the last 10 hours (11.5%).  Foam is thinner, easier to poke a hole in the shag.  Swapped the paddle and noticed that the paddle I was taking out showed itself full a good measure above the max line: it's very unlikely that's the way I filled it.  I'm washing the paddles and refreezing them between uses, but not emptying and refilling them: I'll start fresh from here on out.

• Grenache 

Bubbling 27 burps per minute (I counted).  New measurement standard - bpm.  With that, seeing that there's enough gas developing to protect the wine, I decided not to pop it open and take measurements.  Buying time to get it into the next set of containers this evening.

2000:  74 F in cellar.  119 hours since yeast.

• Muscat

72.9 F, 3.57 pH, 10.5 Brix.  1 Brix (8.6%) drop in 14 hours, foam very thin but gassing very constant.  Am I worried?  Did not put in a fresh paddle.

• Grenache 

Ahhh.  1.6 Brix and I decided to move things into fully topped containers.  3 gal+1 gal+1 liter.

2015 wines, day 5

0600:  60F outside, 74 F in the cellar.  81 hours since yeast.

• Muscat: 74.5 F, 3,52 pH, 14.5 Brix.

Down 2 Brix , about 10%, in the last 8 hours.  Almost at the half-way mark.  The look of the foam and juice is unchanged from last measurement.  Put in a fresh ice paddle, but pretty much every time I get to the wine it's near ambient room temp.

• Grenache: 4.6 Brix!

Bubbler's ticking just a little more slowly than once per second, surface is very prickly with gas, but no foam.  I'm a little surprised by how low we are - needed to switch to the short scale hydrometer to confirm it.

Will need to to move the juice into fully topped containers now or this evening.

2000:  95 hours since yeast.

• Muscat: 74 F, 3.56 pH, 13 Brix.  

So that's another 10% drop in the last 14 hours.  For comparison, last year we at 91 hours there were 13 Brix and at 102 hours there were 10 Brix.
Still plenty of foam (I should hope so, there's a long way to go), a little less wavy and psychedelic than the last day or so. Swapped paddles.

• Grenache: 3.5 Brix

That's nearly a quarter reduction from this morning.  Still generating lots and lots of gas - not in immediate need of topping off.

2015 Muscat, day 4

0600: Outdoors 61 F, cellar 74 F.  Wine 73.1 F, 3.51 pH.  Brix reading, in retrospect, was off by a crazy amount and I need to remeasure.

Thick big-balloon-bubble shag, bubbler pushed up.  Swapped the ice paddle, but just before I did... death in the fermenter!

There's been a black wasp in the cellar since crush day.  I had the lid off the poly tank with the muscat in it, and saw the wasp circle the light just above the tank - and then fly into it!  I rushed over to it in time to see the wasp clinging to the side of the tank above the wine and then, not 5 seconds later, suffocating from the CO2, fall backwards into the foam.  I grabbed the hydrometer tube hoping to fish him out but on my first poke his body was swallowed up in the foam.  Begorah!

2200:  76.4 F, 3.54 pH, 16.5 Brix.  Pushing up the big bubbler.  Deep waffle rainbow yeast.  Warmest the Muscat has been - changed the paddle.  72 hours in I'm happy with the speed of the ferment.

2015 Grenache rosé, day 4

Separating out the posts for the two wines.
Made the decision last night to end the skin contact on the rosé.

0600: Started prepping for the press.

0730: Jonboy arrives and after a judicious amount of coffee we punched down the cap, then opened the bottom valve on the stainless steel tank and got more than 2 gallons of free run rasberry sherbert colored juice.  That lightened the tank enough so that we could carry it out to the patio where the press was set up.  Hot, semi dessicated grapes into the bladder press - everything fit in one load.  Brought the pressure up to 3 bars and left it there for 5 to 10 minutes, bled the bladder and shoved the skins around and reinflated the bladder: 2 more gallons of juice to add to the free run.  Added these to the same 5 gal. carboy.

Very happy with the yield - +4 gallons from 84# of grapes.

1900:  No measurements yet.  Bubbler is popping but I'm surprised not to see any foam - there was some this morning immediately after pressing.

2200:  cellar 75 F, wine 75F, 3.71 pH, and only 5 Brix!  Burn, baby, burn.  Took a video of the C)2 prickling the surface of the wine, bubbler popping.  Since there's no foam it might already be time to go to topped up smaller bottles.

2015 wines, day 3

0600:  Outdoors 58F, cellar 74.5F

Grenache: 22.5 Brix (refractometer), 79 F, 3.63 pH.  Solid cake is forming, punched it down and lots of pink foamy fizz below.








Muscat: 25 Brix (hydrometer), 71.7 F, 3.7 pH.  Deep fluff.  No popping of the bubbler.  Stately at about 36 hours in.  Used the hydrometer because I was getting fooled by alcohol on the refractometer - nope.  Put in a fresh ice paddle.

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Woof!  Got home from work this evening and the air n the cellar said full-on winemaking.

2100: Outdoors 68 F, cellar 75 F.

Muscat: 73 F, 3.65 pH, 16.5 Brix (hydrometer).  Before disturbing the juice you could hear snap crackle pop putting your ear to the tank.  Super-shag inside.  Lori changed the ice paddle.

Grenache: 84.3 F, 3.6 pH, 18.5 Brix (refractometer).  Heat and prickle rising up the stainless steel tank.  Punched it down, looked at the color, and am thinking that tomorrow morning, at maybe 60 hours post-yeast, it will be time to press.  If not then, the next opportunity will be at 72 hours.

For both wines we've blown off roughly a third of the sugar at 48 hours.

2015 wines, day 2

0800: Outdoors 70 F, cellar 77 F.  Muscat 75 F and I added a single San Jamar ice paddle.  Grenache 74 F, 3.69 pH.

The surface of the muscat is already covered with the clingy, leathery stage of yeast.  No audible or visible popping yet, but there's a prickly tang of CO2 to the nose.  Off to a fast start in a very warm cellar.  Going to approach 80 outdoors today, so not much chance of keeping things cool.  We'll ice it as best we can.

Less developed yeast on the Grenache, but it's starting, too.  We haven't set out our pressing plan for it yet.  Watch the color?  Take it at a specific Brix level?

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Have added a chart of measurements and also a side panel to track key dates for the 2015 wines.

1730:
Muscat 72.4F, 3.7pH, 23 Brix by a questionable refractometer reading - too lazy and too early to be hauling the juice into the hydrometer tube.  Exchanged ice paddles.

Grenache 74.9F, 3.7x pH, 22.5 Brix by refractometer.  Punched down the grapes, fizz throughout but not yet ripping.

2130:
Grenache is pumping!  Didn't take measurements but did punch it down and looked at the color of the juice - don't think I want to go longer than tomorrow night for pressing.