Looks like I might need some new critters

I tested the Malic acid levels in the wines today. It appears that the MLF on everything except the Syrah/Sangiovese haven't started, probably because of the heat. At this point I'm inclined to wait a few months until the weather cools and try again.

Here's the results:

Syrah/Sangiovese: 75 mg/L

Syrah/Chenin: 100mg/L

Barbera 1: 160 mg/L

Barbera 2: 160 mg/L

Sangiovese 1: 160 mg/L

On a side note, the Sangiovese is tasting very nice right now.

Another Reason to Love your iPhone

Today I heard that Michael and Coleman harvested their fruit and that they were a little concerned about the acid level in one. So in preparation for my trip to their place I was thinking I wonder if there's an app with all the typical winemaker calculators on it. Sure enough there's a cool app for that!

It's called iWinemaker. How sweet is that?

Talk about yer Indian Summer!

The down side of Garage wine making is the lack of temperature control. Today pushed this to the limit when San Diego was sizzling above 3 digits most of the day. I moved the portable air conditioner to the garage but was only able to do that late in the day and I'm not sure how much impact it's going to have. We'll just do the best we can, I hope that the ML wasn't stalled by the temperature.

Started ML for Barbera and Sangiovese

After getting some new clinitest tablets in the mail I tested the barbera and sangiovese and decided to go forward with MLF on both of them. I innoculated them with Enoferm Alpha this morning and will monitor over the next few days to see how it's going.

The end of major combat operations

Today I pressed the Ambient yeast fermentation of the Barbera and Sangiovese. Which means that I'm finished pressing everything at this point. Now I'll just wait for more residual sugar test pills to arrive so I can decide when to start the MLF on the Barbera's and Sangiovese's. They should be pretty dry at this point but never hurts to check. All things considered I think everything turned out pretty well. I think the Syrah will turn out a bit lighter than I would have preferred but should be tasty, the sangiovese and the barbera will likely be the stars and we'll have to decide if there's a blend that makes sense for those.

A quick side trip to Viognier Land

My friend Pelin had harvested her Viognier yesterday and so to help out we met at Michael's house to get it ready for vinification. Instead of running the grapes through the crusher we employed her daughter Sydney in the process. Now known as Crushmaster S, those grapes didn't stand a chance.

After all was said and done she had a 7 gallon carboy full of really nice Viognier juice. Definitely looking forward to tasting some of that.

Pressed the Sangiovese and The Flextank

You know that feeling you get when you've spent all day at the beach and you can't get the sand out of everything. I'm having that feeling about wine right now. After several days of pressing, cleaning, and pressing again our finger nails are looking horrible and there's a semi permanent tint to our hands.

The Sangiovese was relatively easy but getting it out of the Winepod into the press was a bit of a hastle. After my issues with the cross-threading of the press last year the press isn't really working on the pod anymore. It will take some considerable investigation to find out how to fix it. For now we just decided to take everything out of there and put in in the press. We got 9 gallons of very pretty pure Sangiovese from it.

After pressing the Sangiovese I realized that I had run out of residual sugar tests. The guy at the home brew shop mentioned that I could probably pick up some test strips from the pharmacy as diabetics commonly need to test for sugar. Great idea I thought. So asked at the counter and these days they only thing they sell are those electronic testers. What the heck I thought, the cheap tester is only 10 bucks and I  bet it would work out to be pretty cost effective in the long run. Little did I know that if the sugar level won't register on those things if it's under 20g /dL. Bummer!

Then, this morning feeling re-invigorated we decided to take on the big enchilada and press the contents of the flextank. It was quite a job, after filling about 3, 6 gallon carboys I decided that there was just so much juice that it made more sense to go back to the original plan and pump everything back into the second flextank for storage. After all, there's a reason I bought two of them and a pump and a variable volume skin, right?

So with our plan in place we started by using the new pump to get the contents of the carboys back into the flex tank. Then we started pumping straight from the bucket where we were pressing into the flextank. ~40gallons and 3 big cakes later we were done. The total wine in the flextank is about 50 gallons.

Pressed the Barbera

The caps on the barbera went back to falling again and I felt like I needed to protect them a bit more and get them into carboys. So I went ahead and pressed all of them today. For barbera 1 I got 12 gallons, for barbera 2, I managed 11 gallons, and for barbera 3 I got 3 gallons plus a 1.5 liter bottle. I'll let them sit for a few days and run some more residual sugar tests on them before starting MLF. I put airlocks on everything incase there's any fermentation still going on. I hope there is because the measurements indicate that they are all still hovering on or just below -1 brix.

The alcohol measurements were showing 12% for barbera 1 and 2 and a little less for barbera 3. This time I just left each of the cakes in the press after each pressing which make each subsequent pressing easier since I didn't need as much stacked wood to get the pressing done.

At the very end of all the pressings sitting on top of the cake was a lone berry which survived all of the wine making process. Perhaps we should take it back to the vineyard so that it can tell its survival story to the vines.

Re-innoculation status

I'm sure Michael and Coleman will be pleased to know (and give me much grief for) that the Ambient yeast ferment appears to have helped along the Barbera 1, the Cap was up, it wasn't vigorous but looks to be good enough to dry out the rest of the wine. So I went ahead and did the same procedure with Barbera 2. For Barbera 3 I went ahead with the re-innoculation using uvaferm 43 and slowly building up the yeasts with a combination of stalled wine must a small amount of water and a small amount of sugar, then re-innoculated this morning. I hope that by doing all of this I can get fully dry on the wine. I'd really like that to happen by the weekend so I can press everything.

Trying to get the Barbera's completely dry

So, with sinking caps and brix still at 0, I decided that desperate times called for desperate measures. I'm trying two methods for restarting the fermentation on the Barbera's, first the simplest solution which I hope works, I'm adding about 3 liters of must from the ambient yeast fermentation back into Barbera 1 in hopes that this will get things going again. For Barbera 3, I've created a re-innoculation cocktail and will pitch it later today. Barbera 2 will have to wait until I can see what is working best. Also, just did a taste of the wines in the Carboys and I'm pleasantly surprised by the taste. I think the MLF is really helping.

MLF test and tastings

This morning I punched down everything, did some brix tests and tasted the Syrah in the Flextank. The MLF seems to have helped it along very nicely already. It's tasting much better to me and the Malic Acid is coming in at around 130 mg/L. The Barbera is still showing 0 brix and seems to still be sluggish if not stuck. I also did a residual sugar test on it this morning and it's definitely not dry showing 400mg/L. I am really starting to think that a restart is necessary. Will do that on the 5 gallon bucket today first and see how it goes.

Preparing for Plan B.

I'm hoping I don't need it but since it's now been two weeks since I innoculated the Barbera and it's not yet dry I need to prepare to re-innoculate if needed. The cap is still rising slightly so I'll give it some more time. I have the re-innoculation procedure printed out just incase. Sometimes I think my past as a boy scout (be prepared)  is a burden. I'll try and relax.

Olivier's Tasting - The Vinomatch way

My good friend Olivier has a new company that will undoubtedly revolutionize the way people evaluate and purchase wine. The company is called Vinomatch. He stopped by today to do a tasting and used the same criteria that you would use with Vinomatch to evaluate the wine. It's important to remember that although the scales are 1-10 the higher numbers don't imply "better" they are a matter of preference.

Here's the results:

Sangiovese 1:

Aromatic Intensity: 5/10
Sweetness: 4/10
Crispness / Acidity: 7/10
Smoothness: 1.5/10
Body: 5/10
Length: 3/10

Barbera 1:

Aromatic Intensity: 4.5/10

Sweetness: 5.5/10

Crispness / Acidity: 5.5/10

Smoothness: 3/10

Body: 4.5/10

Length: 3.5/10

Barbera 2:

Aromatic Intensity: 4/10

Sweetness: 4/10

Crispness / Acidity: 4.5/10

Smoothness: 4.5/10

Body: 5/10

Length: 4.5/10

Syrah / Sangiovese: 

Aromatic Intensity: 3.5/10

Sweetness: 2.5/10

Crispness / Acidity: 4.5/10

Smoothness: 4.5/10

Body: 5/10

Length: 4.5/10

Syrah / Chenin 2:

Aromatic Intensity: 3.5/10

Sweetness: 2/10

Crispness / Acidity: 2.5/10

Smoothness: 4/10

Body: 5/10

Length: 1/10

Starting Some MLF

Today, I started Malolactic Fermentation on the Syrah and Syrah/Sangiovese blends. They all seem to be completely dry now and could use some MLF to help them mellow out a bit. When I did the punch down in the Flextank I went ahead and added in Enoferm Beta culture disolved in 500ml of water into the tank.

After doing the precision hydrometer test on the Barbera and Sangiovese I was surprised to see that they were not completely dry yet. The Sangiovese was measuring -1.5 brix and the Barbera was at -1 brix. I therefore aborted my plans to innoculate them for MLF and will wait another day or two.

Pressing #2

Today I pressed the Syrah/Sangiovese from the 20 gallon container. I estimated there was about 16 gallons of must in there. After the pressing I got about 9 gallons of juice. I think I could have done better but I'm still not very expert with the press and the Jenga puzzle still makes things a bit difficult.

After realizing that I didn't have any more 3 gallon carboys I was forced into using some beer growlers and a 3 liter wine bottle. It also occurred to me that I hadn't measured the residual sugar on these pressings. The Syrah/Chenin Blanc had un-detectable (<100 mg / l) and the Syrah/Sangiovese still had about 300-400mg / liter.

I  also measured the alcohol level on the Syrah/Sangiovese and the Syrah/Chenin and they both came in at 12%.

First Pressing

The first thing that awaited me this morning was a overly active fermentation going on with the Barbera from last weekend with the ambient yeast. I guess I under estimated how much head room I might need. Well it managed to push it's way out of the airlock.

I then decided to try out the new press and go ahead and put the Syrah/Chenin Blanc #2 into a carboy. It was in a 5 gallon bucket and not completely full so a 3 gallon carboy should do the trick. This was also a perfect time to  try out my nifty carboy cleaning device that attaches to my hand held drill and gives the carboy a nice cleaning.

Then on to the press. Since I've been using the press in the WinePod in prior years this was my first time with a traditional basket press. I'm not overly impressed. It did the job but it doesn't handle small batches very well as you need to stack up wooden blocks between the ratchet and the semi-circle press blocks. If you have a small amount (like one in a 5 gallon bucket) you end up with some Jenga looking stack of wood blocks that don't want to stay in one place and you're lucky if you can get a good pressing. I'm sure there's a better way than using these silly wooden blocks like the ones supplied with the press but I didn't have time to devise something.


Anyway, I managed to get my 3 gallon carboy filled and so the first pressing of 2010 is now complete.

Results of Scott's Tasting

Last night, Scott came over to taste everything and give me an outside opinion. Here's his notes:

Barbera 1:

Intense Color, Still awkward in the nose. Flowery & Dry with a full juicy finish. Nice balance all the way through though still thin on the palate.

Barbera 2:

Fizzy- Still working on alcohol. "You go guy!" Still some residual sugar burning off. Again a bright color mabye a bit meatier than #1

Barbera 3:

Fruit forward properties, just beginning to show. Nice! Definitely on the right track!

Syrah / Sangiovese:

Robust earthy flavor, smooth finish with hint of bitters.

Syrah / Chenin (flextank):

Dry with that juicy finish. Tiniest hint of flower & earth. Solid fruit in the aftertaste.

Sangiovese (Pod):

Dark ruby color, fruit forward beginning. Nice representation of the variety already. Dry finish.

Syrah / Chenin 2:

Most wine-like on the nose of all. Thin up-front and hollow in the finish. Slight hint of anise in the aftertaste.

Thanks to Scott for the notes. It will be interesting to see if any of his tastes come through when everything is complete.

After punching down everything, I pumped a little gas on top of Syrah/Chenin 2 because the cap is starting to sink. Will probably press this one into a carboy this weekend.

Brix check #3

This morning I did some brix checks and tastings. First the results of the brix checks:

Barbera 1: -0.5 brix
Barbera 2: 0 brix
Barbera 3: 0 brix

Sangiovese: -1.5 brix

Syrah/Chenin Flextank: 0 brix
Syrah/Sangiovese: -1 brix
Syrah/Chenin 2: -1 brix

Everything was tasting nice, and the Syrah Chenin Blanc in the 5 gallon bucket is really starting to come around now. I think it's going to be just fine. The stand out so far is the Barbera which was cold soaked. The Sangiovese is also tasting really nice.

I also checked on the Barbera and Sangiovese raw experiments. The barbera had already formed a cap so fermentation has begun. I have to admit that I took some of the barbera off the top and put it in with the Sangiovese because it was going to get to big, pretty small amount and we have a good pure sangiovese anyway.

These experiments are done in the non-intervention method with ambient yeast. I heard the term ambient yeast the other day and it appeals to me because it doesn't say that it is "native" or imply that the yeast has come from the vineyard but may just be one roaming around the winery (garage). I'm also not adding anything at all to the fruit so what we get is what nature has given us.

I've also got the press propped up on bricks now and high enough to press into the 5 gallon buckets. I'll need to do the final assembly of it later but I'm feeling pretty ready for the pressings.

The awkward time

I think that I'm always a little concerned by the taste of the wine just as it is going dry around 0 to -1 brix. It often tastes harsh to me and I often think "Oh no! What have I done!"  but then magically it softens a little and it starts tasting good again. I wonder if I'm just sensitive to this stage or if it's pretty common to feel this way.

So the syrah/chenin in the small bucket that I was worried about is now starting to come around. Today it didn't taste terrible. It's still not pleasant to my taste but much improved from a few days ago. I must really try and get the press ready for the weekend as I think I'll end up pressing a few things at least.

Starting to think about pressing

With several of the wines nearing dryness and my backup carboys on the way I need to start to think about pressing. Since I've had the press built into the Winepod in prior years it was a little easier. This year I bought a #30 basket press. The problem with these things is they are too short to flow into a 5 gallon bucket. I've seen some people building special stands with locking wheels to make it easier to get the wine into the buckets. I may have to do some improvisation. My plan is to first press into 5 gallon buckets, then use the pump or siphon into the carboys. I suppose I'll add the MLF culture once they are in the carboys.

For the flextank, my plan is to pump to the second flextank and use the variable volume skin once the wine is in the second tank. I'll probably put some in carboys to oak so I can see the difference and to make it easier to taste.

As you can see there's a lot of experimentation going on here. A few blending experiments, some tannin experiments, some oak experiemnts, and some native yeast experimentation. My hope will be that I can more clearly learn what I like and be able to make more informed decisions in future batches.

Brix check #2

This morning I did a brix check of everything and the results are:

Barbera 1 (with oak chips): 5 brix

Barbera 2 (cold soak): 5 brix

Barbera 3 (small bucket): 2 brix

Syrah/Sangiovese: 0 brix

Syrah/Chenin Blanc (flextank): 0 brix

Syrah/Chenin Blanc (5gallon bucket): -1 brix

Sangiovese (Pod): 1.5 brix

I also did the measurements on the new stuff that we brought in yesterday they both came in at 22 brix.

Second Harvest

I went back out to the vineyard today in search of any left over fruit that looked good. It was kind of an easter egg hunt as there wasn't much left worth picking. With Michael and Coleman's help I was able to get a tub of Barbera and 3/4 tub of Sangiovese, after crushing they fit nicely in a 6.5gallon bucket and 5 gallon bucket respectively. Per request I'm going to make these totally raw, nothing but grapes and wild yeast in these buckets. We'll see how they go. It will be interesting to see the difference between the various styles of Barbera this year. Will also be interesting to see what the Sangiovese is like with wild yeast.

After crushing and getting everything into the buckets I then did the punch downs today. Everything looks good except that 5 gallon bucket of syrah/chennin blanc which still tastes pretty awful. As many parents lament "maybe it's just a phase."

We also pulled the bird netting up and if there's anything I've learned from this whole experience is that I absolutely hate bird nets. I'll stick to reflective streamers and balloons.

Today's tastings

Today was taste test day. I pulled some samples from all the vats and with the help of my wife's excellent tasting skills here's what we observed:

- Barbera (with Oak chips / No cold Soak) good but a little fuzzy probably due to it's stage in the process.

- Second was the Syrah from the flextank was good but had a slight hint of something sour

- The Sangiovese: The nose was a little harsh but the taste was good. There was something a little effervescent detected.

- The overflow from the flextank was apparently close to completion and tasted pretty bad. It may have something to do with the ratio of Chenin Blanc to Syrah was higher than in the flextank and so it may have caused a bad ratio.

- The Syrah / Sangiovese was tasting good with a good smell.

- The other two Barberas were tasting very nice.

I'm going to reserve final judgement on the pail of syrah / chenin blanc for a week or so to see if it's problems blow off.

Past the peaks

I feel like I can tell through the punch downs tonight that the fermentations have passed their peaks everywhere. The caps were softer and much easier to punch down. They were still thick but just not as hard. The barbera is looking really dark and wonderful. I'm anxious to see how all of these wines turn out. Over the next few days everything should be going pretty dry. I've ordered a bunch more carboys to do the secondary on the barbera although I've heard of people doing MLF during the primary fermentation my protocol is to make sure the wine is completely dry before adding an MLF culture. This year I'm going back to Enoferm Alpha for the secondary. Last year I tried EZMALO ONE from Enartis and it seemed fine but getting it was a little more difficult.

I've got a few more days until I have to worry about such things and I'll extend the maceration on some of them anyway. One trick is to use the seed color as an indicator of when to to press, some like to see the seeds fully saturated with color before pressing. Of course that can take a long time and you risk exposing the wine to too much oxygen during that time if you're not really careful. Since I don't have as much control of Oxygen I'm not likely to extend the maceration too much this year. I'll just have to hope that the cold soak and the other extraction techniques did the trick.

A quick word on why I'm sticking to using all the tools of the trade for these batches. First, since this is my biggest harvest so far and I'm giving back wine in return for the harvest I wanted to add more predictability to the mix, that's why I'm using color extraction enzymes, and yeast nutrients etc. Secondly, since the grapes ripened very unevenly and the brix were low wanted to get as much out of them as possible.

So, in short the wine making I did here doesn't change my feelings about the goodness of low intervention winemaking, but I do believe that to ensure a good result with less intervention you have to be confident in the quality of the fruit and have some historical indicators to guide you. I really had neither for this harvest.

Still going..

Took a look this morning and the cap on the flextank was even higher than yesterday. It's now slightly above the rim. I need to eat an energy bar or something before the next punch down of that beast.

I did a hydrometer reading on the Sangiovese and it's now at 13 brix so moving along nicely. Since the ferment is so vigorous on everything I'm going to skip the fermaid-k on the rest of the vats under the less is more assumption. Besides, the brix was pretty low on everything so there shouldn't be any danger of a stuck fermentation anywhere. The Sangiovese is tasting nice.

Now it's time to start thinking about the plan for secondary fermentation. I've got a bunch of co2 cartridges so I suppose I could keep everything properly gassed but the surface area of the brute containers has me worried and thinking that I should probably do my secondary in carboys for the Barbera. The Sangiovese will be fine in the Pod and the Flextank should be fine for secondary. I'm thinking I don't have enough carboys now. So back to EC Kraus, where the free shipping usually pays off for orders like that. I'll also check Morewine to see if they've got a better deal.

Brix check

I decided to do a few hydrometer readings before my punch down this evening. Here's what I got:

Barbera #1: 17.5 brix

Syrah / Chenin: 17 brix

Sangiovese: 17.5 brix

Syrah / Sangiovese: 20.5 brix (a little sluggish ferment going on there)

All the juice is tasty, no off tastes or smells are detected anywhere. I'm bumping up the temperature of the sangiovese in the pod now to really kick the fermentation into high gear.

The punch down this evening was rough. I didn't anticipate the amount of cap that would be made in the flex tank. The cap was a couple of feet thick and made it really tough to punch down. I went ahead and added the second dose of fermaid-k to the syrah in the flex tank. Everything seems to be going fine but I just want to make sure that there are no snags.

And I was worried about the heat..?

Woke up this morning and it was 65 degrees, very cool for this time of year in San Diego. All the fermentation is looking fine but now instead of worrying that the ambient temperature will be too hot for an optimal ferment I'm now worried about lack of heat. Of course, it's a winemaker's primary responsibility to obsess about everything including things that are out of his control. The caps look more vigorous this morning, I'll wait until later in the day to do another punch down.

All Caps are up

All the caps including the flextank are up and looking good. I've completed the punch-downs and added the first dose (35g) of Fermaid-K to the Syrah in the flextank. Just to make sure we get a strong ferment I will add the rest of the Fermaid-K dose at the following levels for each:

Syrah / Sangiovese: 15 brix (8g)

Sangiovese: 14.5 brix (6g)

Syrah: 14.5 brix (35g)

Barbera: 16.5 brix (7.5g each)

Flextank Inoculation

Time to inoculate the Syrah/Chenin Blanc co-ferment in the Flextank. There's about 70gallons in there so I suspended 70g of ICV-D254 yeast in 1.19 liters of water and 87.5g of Goferm. The quantities were too large for my normal Pyrex measuring cup method so I put it all in a glass pitcher and proceeded to slowly bring the temperature back down to must level.

This is the big kahuna, I also measured the must Brix level again and it looks like the Chenin Blanc may have made a 1 or 2 brix level increase so that's a positive result. I'm curious to see what kind of tastes I get from the co-ferment.

The caps have now risen on all the other inoculations except for the pod which had the temperature set down so it may need a little more time. I raised the temperature last night and it's starting to form a cap now.

I did my first punch down on the Barbera with the oak chips.