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Depending on the wine, you cold add bentonite to fine it and settle it. Or super chill the wine down to get the tartrates to crystalize out. But, really depends on where you are in fermentation or post fermentation stage.

Watering down your wine prefermentation should not cause it to taste watery; watering down after fermentation will. Make your brix adjustment before you make your pH adjustment, after you know the new brix. 26 brix would be fine. Your TA at 6.4 looks good to me, but you need to taste it. No...

Final harvest is Montepulciano - 2 tons in a group buy from Amador. I have been trying to source that varietal for 20 years so really looking forward to it. Malbec from Fiddletown is clearing and ready to go into a 10 gallon barrel My whites - Clarksburg Chenin Blanc, and Courtland Albarino...

I would not start fermentation until I knew for sure that I would be around for the next five days at least to punch down and monitor the fermentation temps. Best to refridgerate the juice until you return from your family emergency. A neglected fermentation is a sad fermentation.

1) The drop in brix should not appreciably effect the pH reading 2) I use a Vinmetrica 300 to measure TA, which is basically using a pH meter and NaOH 3) Yes, dissolved C02 will mess with your readings. Be sure and degas the wine sample by shaking and burping off the gas or warm it up and degas...

Sercani, All good advice re the film. As far as adding bentonite I would advise against it for a red. All of my reds over time settle out any solids. Let time work its magic, ie 12-14 months.

I did by mistake 10 years ago. To chardonnay. Should have been 1/4 tsp and I put in 1 tsp. 240 ppm. So, fermentation of the juice was a struggle until I added hydrogen peroxide to get the pm’s down. It turned out to be a drinkable wine but not a good wine.

Just splash rack big. Aim the outgoing hose against the side of a large open fermenter. If you have a piece of copper tubing, shine it up with steel wool, and splash rack over it. Don’t leave the tubing in very long. Or, use redulees. Just remedy it early before it converts to mercaptins.

I would use an airlocks for the first year. It can detect any new fermentations that may appear.

You might check The Beverage People in Santa Rosa; they might rent them out. Or go by volume and convert to weight. See attached.

In 2020 I went on a 2 week wine cruise up the Danube to Bavaria. But, the day before I went on a half day wine tour to the Etyek wineries only about an hour away. We visited 4 wineries in the afternoon and finished with a really fun dinner at the last small winery. Awesome tour.

The malic acid percentage will not change relative to the many other acids in your wine. If the conditions are right and you haven’t yet bottled your older non m-l wines, you could add the bacteria now.

A bit of exposure to oxygen at this stage is a good thing - keeps the wine from being reductive. But yes, add the bacteria while the ambient temperature is still fairly warm.

Yep, ice bombs are the way to go. Keep rotating them from the must to the freezer. You have a lot more temperature control with ice bombs than with dry ice. Freeze a variety of sizes.