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Yup, you’re all good. I’ve had much worse happen and the wine is fine. Just keep the FSO2 levels up.

Should I filter again? Or just dose higher?

2023 Cabernet Sauvignon, Santa Cruz mountains, 12.5% ABV Primary went great Secondary went great Sealed up the VCT and took off for vacation over Xmas. Returned to find VCT gasket failure. Probably 7 days exposed around the edge of the lid in a 220L Speidel in my cellar at about 60F. A few...

Thanks for the feedback. Ok, I suppose I’ll wait. I’m sure 200-300 mg of tartaric will drop if I chill just above its freezing point. Maybe it will make a little bit of difference? MLF is done, so no more drops from that.

Carbenet Sauvignon from Santa Cruz, 12.5% alcohol, dry and lighter bodied for the type (colder year). I made a mistake and used someone else's numbers for total acid (same crush and grapes). They were off from my portion of the batch by about 1g/L. It was foolish because there are always...

As I mentioned it’s cab from Santa Cruz mountains which is a colder region for CA and it’s been a colder year. Not surprising to see low brix / PA. It might be more “Bordeaux” taste less CA taste. Anyhow, these details don’t bother me.

Thanks. Yeah, this is useful. I degased for CO2 and measured total acid at 7.6 g/L. I think this is very high for a red wine and thus my concern. I had added some tartaric acid to bump it up near 7 from 6.3, but I think I over did it. I'm hoping the MLF I started yesterday and cold...

OK, thanks. Yeah, I mean I understand it has to develop. Certainly my Zinfandel improved dramatically over time. But the initial fruit aromas and flavors were always there. I just have no experience with Cab I suppose.

I just completed alcohol fermentation on some Cabernet Sauvignon I got from the Santa Cruz mountains. A very cool year for California with a nice October harvest. It clocked in at 12.5% potential alcohol and a TA of 6.3 g/L which I bumped to 7 g/L. Alcohol fermentation took about 6-7 days and...

I found that I needed to blend the grapes in a blender first to get consistent results. Now everything makes sense and is reproducible. Surprised to find this to be needed because many methods don’t suggest this. All is good now PA is ~13% and TA and pH are good. Thanks

cabernet sauvignon grapes, stirred the must and collected a uniform volume. Took one portion through a coffee filter to remove fine solids. Measuring a specific gravity of about 1.096 in the unfiltered must. Brix is 20 for filtered must and 21 for unfiltered. In both cases pretty different...

The barrel is brand new. So I am going to have to be very careful with how much oak. I do not intend to oak the port longer, per se, other than it will be the second wine that the barrel sees since i cannot fit all the wine in at once. Should I buy a bigger barrel instead? I don’t have a feel...

Thanks CDrew. Sorry, I forgot to mention I have a 20L barrel I want to oak with. Thus breaking things up as I did.

I have about 60L of zinfandel wine. I want to oak the base wine and make about 20L of port. My plan is to oak 20L of wine. Age the 20L until I like the taste by mixing 50/50 with unoaked. Then to combine the 20L oaked wine with another 20Lunoaked to achieve what my tasting panel was set to (40L...

I added the EC-1118 starter 5 days ago (Tuesday). Three days ago I measured specific gravity at 1.013. Today I am getting around the same, maybe 1.0125 if I am being generous. BTW to get an accurate SG I found I had to lightly "blend" the wine in a blender and filter it through a coffee filter...

I have about 200L of wine finishing up in a 300L marchisio tank. I don’t want to press, just want free run juice. But how to separate from skins and transfer the wine without a press? Has anyone done this before? I was looking at a perforated suction tube, but that is quite expensive. Also, not...

So I added the starter to the main ferment this afternoon. Main ferment gives SG of 1.020, about what I calculated from the Brix and equations earlier. We'll see how things proceed now that EC-1118 is working on things. I have some Uvaferm as a backup just in case. Just curious, since this is...

I dry pitched 60g of BM-45 initially with no nutrients (whoops). For the starter, I hydrated 80g of EC-1118 in 0.88L of water with fermstart. I added 4.4g of Fermaid O to the starter volume (7.5L). Then introduced the wine slowly to the foaming yeast vessel. Because I thought my sugar was...

Also, at which point to add the restart to the main ferment? I have heard a suggestion of 1.000 SG

So I'm reading 14 now Brix for my main ferment. Not sure what the difference is about from 13 measured earlier, but this puts me at a specific gravity of 1.022 according to my calculations. For my starter ferment with EC-1118, I am getting 12.5 Brix after pitching on Friday. This puts me at...