I drove to @VinesnBines's western VA vineyard this morning, and she, her husband, and I crushed 120+ lbs each Chambourcin and Vidal for me -- plus more Vidal, Chambourcin, and Chelois for them.
It's a 4 hour drive each way plus 2 hours of work (finished with her very tasty Vidal), and while I'm a bit tired, I'm in the middle of making starters and sorting grapes & juice into fermenters.
I'm performing 2 experiments:
Vidal -- I'm separating out ~4 gallons of juice to ferment as a normal white, and the remaining pulp/juice will be fermented as an "orange" wine, using Renaissance TR-313 yeast. I want to see the differences between the two.
Chambourcin -- this will be fermented in 2 batches using Renaissance Avante and Bravo, respectively. Post-fermentation I'll retain a sample of each batch, but most of it will be blended. The goal is to see how much difference there is between the three wines.
Note -- Avante is supposed to eat 25-30% of the malic acid, so I'm taking pH readings along the way, far more than I normally do.
The starters are created -- 2 tsp of each yeast, 1/2 tsp Fermax, and 3 Tbsp sugar. I'll inoculate in the morning, right after checking brix and pH.
I haven't paid a lot of attention to yeast in the past, but making 4 starters from 3 yeast made me look. In the following picture the 2 on the left are TR-313, then Avante and Bravo.
TR-313 and Avante look alike at first glance, but are clearly different. Bravo is MUCH darker and even more different.
EDIT: added the picture of the yeast:
It's a 4 hour drive each way plus 2 hours of work (finished with her very tasty Vidal), and while I'm a bit tired, I'm in the middle of making starters and sorting grapes & juice into fermenters.
I'm performing 2 experiments:
Vidal -- I'm separating out ~4 gallons of juice to ferment as a normal white, and the remaining pulp/juice will be fermented as an "orange" wine, using Renaissance TR-313 yeast. I want to see the differences between the two.
Chambourcin -- this will be fermented in 2 batches using Renaissance Avante and Bravo, respectively. Post-fermentation I'll retain a sample of each batch, but most of it will be blended. The goal is to see how much difference there is between the three wines.
Note -- Avante is supposed to eat 25-30% of the malic acid, so I'm taking pH readings along the way, far more than I normally do.
The starters are created -- 2 tsp of each yeast, 1/2 tsp Fermax, and 3 Tbsp sugar. I'll inoculate in the morning, right after checking brix and pH.
I haven't paid a lot of attention to yeast in the past, but making 4 starters from 3 yeast made me look. In the following picture the 2 on the left are TR-313, then Avante and Bravo.
TR-313 and Avante look alike at first glance, but are clearly different. Bravo is MUCH darker and even more different.
EDIT: added the picture of the yeast:
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