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No Tilt, and I am not sure if a Tilt will work in a red must. I figured they were for beer. So, I measure the values with a floating hydrometer once a day and add it to a Google spreadsheet.

I love a wine that ages well, and I associate that quality with the tannic Bordeaux wines that have the puckery drying tannin quality. My grapes are always so ripe that I have never been able to achieve that style in my wine. I watched a movie where the French winemaker describes California wine...

The ferment is winding down. Time to schedule a bladder press rental.

Did you get a TA measurement? I would guess there were a fair amount of raisins. I picked some crazy Brix Cabernet and I am currently making a port-style wine. I am tasting my 2022 blend and, it needs to rest, I assume that it is very bottle-shocked. I sulfited to 20ppm and raw sulfites can...

Yes. That is what happened I am now bottling 27 gallons of 2022 wine tonight because I need the carboys and the space, ACK Looks like another Bordeaux blend is in the works. Even adding a touch of PV. So far, smells great and I like the amount of oak added. one bottle of Petit Verdot added and...

Big Brix drop on the Zin to 2.5 Some of the batches dropped faster than I predicted. I detected a whiff of H2S on the Merlot and Zin. I avoid feeding a must below 10 Brix, so I cut it close on the Merlot. The Zin gets no food at this point--It is almost finished. The other three got nutrients...

Maybe your pH is very low, combined with the cold juice. You say that you racked the juice. What settled out of the juice that required racking? And I assume when you rehydrated the yeast, it was obviously alive and growing before you added it to the juice? Definitely adding more yeast sooner...

Odd that you got that low level Brix. When you hand picked, did you select the first two to three nearest the cordon? Or did you pick clusters farther out on the canes? They are less ripe

Wow. Maybe it is brett, but I have never seen a brett infection before. Does it smell mousy, sweaty? Something in the winemaking steps was missed.

For the winemakers that love a horse race: I set the temperature of the workshop to 78F today, to get a hotter ferment—great color on all the batches including the Zin, which did not receive enzyme. I taste green apple malic acid in the Zin. The other three batches have the more typical...

From WineMaker magazine: I will have to closely monitor my Zinfandel ripeness, and do some whole cluster sampling.

I co-inoculated all batches with the ML bacteria tonight at the onset of fermentation. The caps are starting to form. I tested the TA of one of my finished wines with the same NaOH, measuring 6 g/L. That is close to what I expected. I will recheck the musts at the end of AF. The taste is more...

The TA is high. I agree. Avante would have been a good yeast, but I did not expect this. San Jose is hot and grapes are ripe and low acid. My NaOH is one year old. I guess there is a chance that it is bad and I have made mistakes before. It is probably worth rechecking later. I can add acid if...

I second @Rice_Guy on adding grape or apple juice to the mix. I made blackberry wine with only table sugar as the sweetener and it is good, but it does not have much of a ‘nose’ and I miss it.

BM 4x4 that I had left over from last year. It seems to be quite alive and happy. I have tried Merit and D-80 as well. I really don’t notice any difference. I keep them all well fed and my grapes are usually in good shape.

I am starting a thread with my winemaking progress. Everybody feel free to jump in and post also. I picked grapes on 9/8 and Finally got them destemmed on 9/12. I did not notice any issues with the fruit starting to turn, but I kept them about 60-70F. After a day of cold-soaking (ha, actually I...

after an overnight soak the color is better. I did not use enzymes. I added a cup of oak chips to the batch and watered down to 25 Brix. Oh, and I definitely don’t need acid. pH=3.47. TA=10.5 g/L. Wow. So, some of the fruit is from clusters on lateral shoots that looked ripe, tasted ripe but...

I have crushed the Zin. 8.8 Liters of must and my calculations say I potentially have all of TWO gallons of juice! It will probably ferment faster than my other batches and since I rent a press, I will have to figure out some manual form of pressing the skins, or just taking the free run will be...

Ha! All the kids I know want candy, not grapes. I have started a front yard vineyard with individual vines each on its own grape stake, growing them in a head trained style. I get many compliments and questions from the neighbors.

Red stems. That is good and ripe Malbec