Someone posted a few days or weeks ago that we never talk about our failures and problems, only our successes. Well, for those that think every wine making episode goes off without a hitch, read on.
I put the Granbarolo on today and I can't tell you how horrible an experience I had doing it. I have two kits and I am fermenting them in my 20 gallon fermenter. I need to put the fermenter on a table that is about 3 feet above the floor to accommodate future racking. I could not fill the fermenter with 12 gallons of juice and then raise it to the table height so I put the fermenter on the table with the thought of emptying the bags of juice (23 liters each) into it. It is not that the bags are heavy but they are bulky and hard to handle, particularly when the cap is off. MM does not have the clever pourer holder built into their boxes that Cellar Craft does, at least not in the All Juice Master Edition line. I got on a step stool because the top of the fermenter was about 6 feet from the floor level. Of course with the top off the bag, juice was sloshing around all over the place. The bag slipped out of my hand and fell (luckily) into the fermenter but splashed juice all over the walls and 4 5-gallon carboys of wine I have going.
I uttered some "technical terms" and finished emptying the first bag and cleaned up the mess. I got the second bag and repeated the process. This time the bag slipped out of my hand and landed on the table with an even greater loss of juice. By this time I was speaking in tongues which aroused my wife's curiosity so she came down to the basement to see what the excitement was about.
Being a "cleaner" type person, she immediately lauched into GI-ing the area as I continued spewing out profanities and throwing things. In 47 years she has learned largely to ignore my tirades, which has a surprisingly calming effect on me. We got everything back to almost normal. I think I lost about a half gallon of juice or so and the whitewashed wall that I have in the basement looks like the wall from the warehouse at 2122 North Clark Street after the St. Valentine's Day Massacre but other than that everything seems okay.
I was already miffed when I started because of the way the kits were packed. It takes a special talent to load the juice bag into the box with the cap on the bottom but that is what I found in one box. In the other the cap was against the side of the box and both required lifting the bag out of the box and repositioning it. I can't help but think the people who back these boxes do this on purpose. I have found this before in MM products. They must have Bozo the Clown working on their packing line.
In my "after action" exercise I determined that what I should have done was to make my own pourer support by cutting a hole in the top and then fitting the spout through it like the other kits have. Hindsight, etc.
