Blog Catch-up: 11/12-11/17

Hi All -- things have been busy the last few days, so I'm updating the blog with 6 days worth of posts here:

11/12: Temp = 77F, Brix = 11.5.

Taste of must is much less sweet, and highly carbonated. Kind of like a warm, carbonated red punch, but really not quite as good as that. I hope this is how it's supposed to taste....

For fun, here's a shot of Katie hiding out in the wind machine at the vineyard:



11/13: Temp = 77F, Brix = 9.0.

If sugar conversion stalls out, we'll add Champagne yeast and more nutrients. Seems OK at the moment, but we are monitoring this closely.

COMING SOON: Malolactic fermentation ( click here for an explanation.) Once the sugar is down to zero, we will press the must, and move the resulting wine into a secondary fermentation vat. There, we'll convert malic acid to lactic acid, which will make the wine taste really nice. (The easiest place to taste what malolactic fermentation does is a buttery chardonay. Without a second fermentation, there would be no butter flavor, but more fruit. )

THE QUEST FOR FERMENTATION VESSELS: For the malolactic fermetation, we'll need airtight containers. During yeast fermentation, the "cap" of grape skins forms on top of the must, protecting the wine from oxidation. During malolactic, the skins are gone, so we'll use an airlock to protect the wine. Pros use stainless steel vats. I will use food-grade plastic. Hoping to find two 30-gallon barrels, since they are much easier to work with than full 55-gallon drums.

11/14:
Air temp = 77F
Must temp = 77F
Brix = 5.0

We now have malolactic fermentation barrels. 30-gallon barrels proved hard to find, but Questar in Newark CA took care of us. List price was $56 each for open-head, clamp-lid barrels, though in the end they gave them to us for $36 each. If you are in the area, they can be reached at 510-324-1333. Don't get the reconditioned barrels, since they may have contained all sorts of nasty chemicals. The new, blue drums are made out of HDPE, just like 1-gallon milk jugs.

11/15:
Air temp = 78F
Must temp = 78F
Brix = 3.0
Getting close to press time!

11/16:
Air temp = 77F
Must temp = 78F
Brix = 2.0

11/17:
Air temp = 78F
Must temp = 78F
Brix = 1.0

Oak Barrel says we press on Monday!

At current Brix, there is less CO2 offgassing, therefore 2x a day is plenty for punching down. Also, now is tme to make sure anything that touches the wine is sterile (not enough CO2 being produced now. The CO2 is what has been protecting the wine up to now. )

To-do list for Malolactic fermentation:

__ Drill barrel heads for #7 stoppers ( 1.25" diameter holes) for air locks.
__ Prepare to sterilyze barrels.

The "fermentation thing"

11/11: Temp of room dropped to 68F today, because the garage door was open during construction. But the must is still in the high 70s F.

Our friend Jason visited the garage today, and helped with the punching down. The whole "fermentation thing" was a bit much for him, so he passed on tasting the must.

Brix today was down to 12.5! Fermentation is going fast. Must still tastes a little sweet, but the alcohol taste is much stronger. Plenty of very fine carbonation.

Fed the yeast 2oz. of yeast food, hopefully they are happy yeast. Need to find a 55 gallon plastic drum ASAP for malolactic fermentation, which could happen soon.

Just Warming Up...

11/10: Katie helped with the morning punch-down.



Room temperature is 74 degrees, now that I have a heater going in the garage, and have constructed a door to keep the heat from escaping into the rest of the basement. Must temperature is 76 degrees, which means that the fermetation is taking off.

To maximize flavor, I'm hoping the temp ends up near 85 degrees. Though this is much debated, it seems that higher temperatures during fermetation mean more flavors can come off the skins. (The 2-day "cold-soak" between crush and yeast innoculation also should help deepen flavor. )

Fermentation Action

11/9: 8am punched down cap. Something is happening, I think the fermentation is working. The density of the must has dropped dramatically, probably because little bubbles from fermentation are fluffing everything up. Much easier to stir the must now.

Room temp = must temp = 68 degrees. Per hydrometer, Brix is still about 26.

Punched down cap twice more, at lunch time and before bed. More punching down means more flavor, will shoot for 4 punch-downs tomorrow.

Here's a photo of our as-yet-unnamed wine cellar, aka Le Garage:

The lab results are in

11/8: Per the lab tests at Oak Barrel, initial pH = 3.95, and acid = 0.61. The must needs 10 ounces of tartaric acid to bring up the total acidity. Mixed acid into water, divided into 4 parts, stirred into must. This should lower pH to about 3.825, and bring the acid up to 0.71. Which, I am assured, is good.

Here's a closeup of a cluster of representative grapes:



Must temperature at 6pm = 68 degrees.

Then added 3 packets (15 mg) of Pasteur Red yeast into each fermenter, plus 2 oz total of yeast nutrients. (I rehydrated the yeast in warm water for 30 minutes before adding to fermenter).

Mixed up a sterilizing solution: 1/4 teaspoon of potassium meta sulfide + 2 teaspoons of citric acid, mixed into 1 liter of water, in a spray bottle. Use to keep thermometer, hydrometer, etc. clean before allowing contact with must.

The boys in the lab

11/7: Punched down cap in the morning, after coffee. They make cap mashers exclusively for wine, but a 3-foot restaurant-style potato masher works just as well:



Took 1 quart of representative must to Oak Barrel for testing. Need to determine true Brix, acid, pH. This will tell us how much water to add, to bring down sugar to 24-26 Brix.

LAB RESULTS: the boys at Oak Barrel rechecked the sugar, which came out at 25.8 Brix. This is perfect, no need to dilute with water (or "over-rinse the fermenters, in wine professional parlance.) Acidity and pH data will come in tomorrow. Temperature of the must is 68 Farenheit.

YEAST: I bought 12 packets of Pasteur Red yeast, and 2 packs of "yeast nutrients." (contains yeast hulls, yeast extracts, vitamins, and minerals.) The yeast goes in tomorrow , once we are sure that the meta has disappated. Pasteur red is also called French red. Like Champagne yeast, it is a mixed population strain. It was developed in Bordeaux, France. It is meant for red wines because it is tolerant to heat and sulfur dioxide and hardly ever causes stuck fermentation. The red wines it is usually used for are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Zinfandel. Pasteur Red encourages development of varietal fruit flavors, so it will help us get a good sense of the flavor of the Pollard Ranch grapes. Pasteur Red (Davis 904), a strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, has been derived from the collection of the Institute Pasteur in Paris. It is a strong, even fermenter that produces full bodied reds.

ANTS!!! Ants are circling the driveway, where 10-20 lbs. of grapes lay, casualties of the stem/decrush process. Per Bernie at the Oak Barrel, the carbon dioxide from fermentation will keep the ants out of the must. Hope so. Otherwise, we'll have to start marketing "Mike's High-Protein Red." I'm a good marketer, but I'm not sure I'm THAT good.

WINERY NAME: On the off chance that this project takes off, what is it called?
* McColl-Pollard Cellars?
* Coll-Poll Cellars?
* Chateau Garagiste ?
* PM Wines ?
(If you have suggestions, silly or not, please email them on in! We'll be working on the label design for the next couple of years. I'd like to get the winery name sorted out early. )

Harvest time in Napa !

11/6/2006: Harvest day at Pollard Ranch is today!



We were given access to the secondary crop, and brought in half a ton premium Cab Sauv grapes. We got about 800 lbs from old vines, 200 from new. Very heterogenous grapes: 50 percent taut skins, 30 percent golf balls, 20 percent significantly shriveled. Zero green grapes, zero raisins.

Timing: harvest at 7am (!!!), finished by 10am. Thanks to Paul Garvey, I paid 7 pickers from Michoacan $40 each. We filled four 44-gallon garbage cans, one 33 gallon, and 5 mail tubs. Per refractometer (from Kyle the vint of Paul Garvey's crew), field Brix = 28. Per Oak Barrel, Brix varies between 25-30.

Stemmer/decrusher 5pm-7pm. PROS: was able to process grapes right off the back of the truck. Used the tailgate and sawhorses to support stemmer crusher. CONS: Inefficient setup required crusing into 2 side-by-side must bins and a stem/refuse bin. Then hand-bucketed the must into fermenters. Next time, I'll set up stemmer/decrusher about 4 feet off ground, so that grapes go straight into primary fermenter, via some sort of funnel. Paid $50 for 1 day rental of stemmer/crusher.



Chemicals: added metabisulfite (meta) to stop any native yeast etc., and diammoniam phosphate (to prevent later hydrogen sulfide production). Mixed both with water into one bucket, dumped 1/4 into each fermenter, stirred with punch down tool.