Fall Wine Plans! A Storm is brewing....

[ShawnDTurner]

Remember to be gentle with pinot, u can't treat it like c a b sav. Gentle punch downs twice a day.

 

[seth8530]

I am having a hard time being gentle. I know I should be though. I want to make sure it stays well mixed as it goes through cold maceration to insure optimal extraction but I also need to not abuse the grapes... One thing that surprised me was that these frozen must buckets were full to the brim with grapes! I was expecting mostly juice and then some grapes on top.. BUt now, these pales are practically crushed grape pales... Much better word than frozen must.

 

[ShawnDTurner]

As long as they are wet you are good.

 

[seth8530]

Thanks, I will keep that in mind.. Hopefully this pinot will be epix.. BTW, now shooting for .65 acidity on the pinot noir after some research.

 

[seth8530]

Ok, re hydrated d-47 in go germ and pitched it into the chard.. Post acid addition acid reads around .625 grams per liter. I might adjust that post ferment but I am happy with that for now. I aimed to sweeten it up to 1.1 However, after addition and stirring I ended up at 1.096.. Perhaps it will creep up those last 4 points in a bit or not.. Either way I am not way too concerned.

Pinot noir seems to be happy chilling out at 41F previous fermentation signs have ceased which is good. I will continue stirring twice I day untill I consider the cold soak finished. Once that is done I will check the gravity and acid.. Adjust.. and then split it up into its two separate batches as evenly as I can.

 

[sour_grapes]

You should also do a port of some sort..... You know, any port in a storm!

 

[Snafflebit]

I want to make Pinot Noir so bad!

Russian River Pinot is wonderful stuff, those are good grapes.

Another perfect terroir for Pinot is Santa Lucia Highlands if you can find a place to sell the grapes.

I have seen Pinot Noir musts brewing and it ain't that pretty red color you get from Cab Sauv. Extracting all the possible color is essential for a good Pinot, or so I have seen.

keep us updated!

 

[seth8530]

You should also do a port of some sort..... You know, any port in a storm!

Heh, port.. I actually have a black currant "port" aging right now.. been a while since I have tried it but I have vowed not to try it again until it hits the 2 year mark.. So that is around 5 months away I think. It would be really cool to make a "port" from frozen must though.

I want to make Pinot Noir so bad!

Russian River Pinot is wonderful stuff, those are good grapes.

Another perfect terroir for Pinot is Santa Lucia Highlands if you can find a place to sell the grapes.

I have seen Pinot Noir musts brewing and it ain't that pretty red color you get from Cab Sauv. Extracting all the possible color is essential for a good Pinot, or so I have seen.

keep us updated!

You know I have never actually had a Russian River Pinot so I might have to try one next weekend. I hope I will be able to extract good colour; however, for me I would rather have a weak colour and better aroma.



BTW Thank you to all who have shown interest in this project. I have enjoyed all the input I have received.

 

[ShawnDTurner]

Seth .65 is a good number... You will not notice much from .70 with Pinot. At .65 it should settle your Ph around 3.40 - 3.45. Closer to 3.45. Cheers!

 

[seth8530]

Thanks for the advice. I just checked the brix on the pinot noir by skimming some juice out and then straining it and then taking a hydrometer reading.. It looks like we are looking at around 24 brix at around 64F. I will check the TA later once we are actually done with the cold soak. The grapes were rated for 23 brix and showed signs of fermentation so it would seem to me that the cold soak is working.

Also, I pitched D-47 re hydrated in goferm into the chard two days ago.. Still no signs of activity. To counter this I re hydrated another packet of yeast in go ferm and re pitched. Hopefully It will show some activity soon.

 

[seth8530]

So earlier today the chard showed some of the earliest signs of fermentation ( fermentation smell and very light fizz on stirring) but bubbles or anything else.. Checked it late tonight and it was bubbling.. So it looks like re pitching the yeast got the chard back on track! I will start the other chard by putting a volume of the fermenting chard into the non inoculated chard when the time comes.

 

[jensmith]

Oh, chard as on chardanay and not swiss chard!!! Time to get my head out of the the garden and back into the wine! It only took rereading the whole post to figure it out.

 

[seth8530]

Haha, my bad lol. Yes, chard is Chardonnay for me when i'm feeling lazy.

So me and a buddy managed to separate out the cold soaking pinot noir into two buckets with approximately equal volumes of skin and juice each ( not exact)... But close enough eh? Each container has around 34.5 liters in them and the SG is sitting at 1.114 on each guy ( hopefully sediment was not throwing it off way too bad.. we tried to correct by putting the must through a strainer a few times and then measuring at 64F)... But apparently the cold soak helped liberate a lot of sugar considering it started off at 23 brix according to the grower...

So vitals
SG=1.114?
TA=.65 (measured by taking the must and adding a good volume of deionzed distilled water from the chem lab and then looking for the end point)
Yeast 3001
2 oz of med+ Hungarian oak chips per 34.5 liter fermenter. I will likely reduce this down to 2oz of oak for the whole batch once I go into secondary.
Temp for the cold is at 54F hot will be fermented at room temp.


Rehydrated the 3001 yeast in 20 grams go ferm and 400 grams water and then split that evenly between the two batches. I plan on adding fermid O in 5 additions at .5 grams/liter.. I came up with this regimen by shooting for 320 mg/L YAN dividing by the YAN contribution of fermaid O per .3 gram and then multipling that by .3.. .I then assumed that fermaid O YAN is 33% more efficient than DAP YAN thus I multiplied by addition by .66.. Hopefully this will work out for the best.


I had a really hard time keeping up with the nutrient scheduling on the room temp Chard, around 35 hours after noticing a slight fizzing and a gravity of around 1.090 it had already dropped down to around 1.020 ish. So, it was a rocket once it finally got started. I am hoping that the pinot noir proves more manageable.

 

[seth8530]

Looks like we are having the beginnings of activity on the pinot noir. I have decided that I do not care that my SG measurements are not truly accurate due to all the floaties in the tube. Thus I will only use the deltas in gravity for scheduling purposes. When all is said and done I will test the ABV with an ebuilometer.

Racked the hot chard into a 6 gallon carboy, and ended up with 3 wine bottles of extra. One of the bottles will be used to start the cold batch, the other two will be reserved for topping off.

Added, half a medium+ french oak wine stix and 1 spiral of american white oak medium toast to the 6 gallon carboy. Also added, 4.5 grams of Optiwhite. Gravity was .992. I should of added the optiwhite before fermentation ended but the chard was so hard to keep up with since it was moving so fast.

 

[seth8530]

Cold pinot is still holding around 1.112. I have made 2 additions to the Hot Pinot noir. One this morning at 1.096 with .5g/L fermaid O and then Just a few minutes ago at 1.074 at .5g/L again.

 

[Snafflebit]

Looks like we are having the beginnings of activity on the pinot noir. I have decided that I do not care that my SG measurements are not truly accurate due to all the floaties in the tube. Thus I will only use the deltas in gravity for scheduling purposes. When all is said and done I will test the ABV with an ebuilometer.

Racked the hot chard into a 6 gallon carboy, and ended up with 3 wine bottles of extra. One of the bottles will be used to start the cold batch, the other two will be reserved for topping off.

Added, half a medium+ french oak wine stix and 1 spiral of american white oak medium toast to the 6 gallon carboy. Also added, 4.5 grams of Optiwhite. Gravity was .992. I should of added the optiwhite before fermentation ended but the chard was so hard to keep up with since it was moving so fast.

Floaties in the tube? Are you not straining the juice before it goes into the tube? My technique is to use a sieve and scoop up the must, letting the juice flow through into the test tube. I can't get an accurate hydrometer reading any other way.

I have been meaning to ask where you ordered the Iron Oaks must? I have looked for some frozen buckets, but I have found nothing from Russian River.

 

[seth8530]

Floaties in the tube? Are you not straining the juice before it goes into the tube? My technique is to use a sieve and scoop up the must, letting the juice flow through into the test tube. I can't get an accurate hydrometer reading any other way.

I have been meaning to ask where you ordered the Iron Oaks must? I have looked for some frozen buckets, but I have found nothing from Russian River.

Yeah, grape particulates and the such. I am running it through a seive but I do not think it is good enough.

I got mine from juicegrape.com ie the M&M grape company. I would not be surprised if they still have some.

 

[seth8530]

The Hot pinot noir once again proved too hard to keep up with. I ended up adding my last addition of goferm this morning at around 1.030. I also added in booster rouge at .3g/l. All is not bad though since, I atleast managed to keep a 1/3 then 2/3 sugar break addition plan. But, not I would of proffered more additions of lesser volume.

The cold pinot noir showed some signs of activity but the gravity does not seem to be moving much.

 

[seth8530]

Pressed the skins dry on my hot batch tonight. All in all clean up included it took about 3 hours using a bucket inside of a bucket press. I kept all the skins and I will be using them for a future mead. This should help minimize losses from not being able to extract all the juice from the skins from the press.

The juice and skin mixture was 36 liters I managed to extract 19 liters of juice from that mixture. So all in all not way too bad of pressing efficiency considering my press is not exactly what I would call the pinnacle of engineering excellence. This morning the wine was at 1.004.. My bet is that it will go completely dry quite soon.

The cold pinot noir is still floating around 1.090. However, he is slowly chugging on along....

 

[seth8530]

The cold pinot is now moving along well at 56F. I added .5g/l fermaid O at 1.074. Next addition is at 1.062