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I haven't tried oak chips during fermentation, but I believe you want to be somewhat restrained to not overoak the wine (especially if you're planning on adding oak during aging as well.) Alison Crowe at Winemaker Mag says she does "50/50 mixture of toasted and untoasted fine-grain oak chips to...

Picked a bit over 200lbs of Russian River Pinot Noir on Wed (sorry, no pics), from a commercial vineyard that had excess. Inoculated yesterday afternoon, bubbling away nicely today. Picking my tiny Pinot Noir vineyard on Monday for a Rose.

For rats, have you looked into https://ecoclearproducts.com/collections/ratx ? It's basically corn gluten and salt, and kills them by disrupting their digestive system. I haven't used it personally, but heard good things. I had raccoons eating all my grapes a couple years ago. Tried building...

I think I've maxed out the carboy collection for this season: Two Pinot Noirs: a tiny batch from my 8 vines, larger batch from a home vineyard a couple miles away, both Petaluma Gap AVA - through AF and going through ML now Rosé of PN - through AF, need to do a cold stabilization trial to see...

I took winemaking classes at Santa Rosa Junior College. Started with just one little tasting class, and ended up taking almost every class they offered. :) A lot of wineries recruit harvest interns from SRJC, so I got a great opportunity to do an internship was with a small winery near...

I use a deep "noodle" strainer like this to take samples from must: https://www.amazon.com/M-V-Trading-SD2011-Stainless-Strainer/dp/B01EU20XG4

I tried a mesh bag directly around an autosiphon today, and that failed miserably. I think there needs to be a large enough amount of space around the siphon to allow wine to flow in as fast as it's being pumped out. Your solution looks great for that. Is that about 2" dia PVC? The winery I...

Thanks, I wasn't sure. I've made cider, but not fruit wine.

Note that punch downs for red wine are typically done twice/day (or even 3x) and need to be done consistently throughout primary. The skins trap CO2 and float up to the top, forming a "cap". It needs to get broken up and mixed back in a) to get good extraction from the skins and b) prevent...

Harvested 175 lbs of Pinot Noir a few miles up the road yesterday. Hand destemmed (long, long day), and put to cold soak. Then harvested my tiny "estate" vineyard this morning, destemmed, and put it to soak as well. I was going to let my grapes hand for a few days more, but we had some rain on...

Picked 137lbs this morning. Avoided the raisins or semi dried out clusters. Macerated 2/3 for a few hours, rest went into the press whole cluster. Pressed everything off this afternoon and ended up with 8 gal. Brix 22.6, pH 2.96. I'll rack tomorrow and take samples to a lab for full numbers.

pH for just-squeezed juice is well below 3. Brix is around 22. If I let the grapes macerate for a few hours, the pH shifts up a bit (Brix stays fairly constant). The vines (not mine) are in pretty rough shape, some have completely shut down and some others are looking pretty close - few...

The raccoons left me about 28lbs last year. I probably would have had at least double that. Looks about the same this year and so far I haven't lost too much. I'll probably pick middle of next week so will have numbers then. I'm likely overcropping, and don't drop any fruit. I know I should...

I'm now trying to figure out how to get "meaningful" results when sampling for whites and rosé vs. red wines. Mashing by hand then soaking up for 5 hours seems reasonable for reds, but obviously isn't going to give a good representation of what you'll get when making white or rosé. But mashing...

I purchased the 5.3gal (20L) version of the EJWOX brand in 2020. I had issues originally with the hose connector - the thread on the fitting was not FHT (IIRC it was tapered, maybe NPT but I never verified that). Contacted the manufacturer via Amazon, and they sent me a correct fitting. I...

My small batches (1-3gal) seem to ferment dry and go through ML very fast - primary is often done in 4 days, and ML in less than a week. And not enough mass to really warm things up. Color on PN seems ok despite that, but body is thin. But low extraction seems to have worked out ok for the...

Are you checking the pH right away after sampling, or letting the grapes macerate for a few hours? I'm seeing some pretty big shifts after a few hours - pH went up 0.3 on some PN yesterday after about 5 hours of soaking at 55F. Only a minor shift in Brix.

The main thing I learned was clean, clean, and then clean again. :) Also, size matters. Fermentation (and almost everything else) behaves differently in a 3T tank vs. a 5gal bucket.

Hi, I just discovered this forum today while searching for some info on making rosé. I was a winemaking intern in 2018 and 2019 at a small winery in Sonoma County (mostly Pinot Noir, a bit of Chard), and started making wine at home in 2020. I have a tiny vineyard - 8 PN vines - and make very...