ex candore decus

Update… and Off on Vacation!

It is September 4th, Thursday morning. We have been on vacation this week, taking advantage of the Labor Day holiday. We’re heading to Austin today through Sunday for some much needed relaxation away from the bustling city of Houston. Originally we had planned to go to Puerto Vallarta, but those plans didn’t gel. That’s ok, we love Austin.

While we are staying near downtown Austin, we have reservations for a morning spa treatment at the Lake Austin Spa Resort. Nothing too fancy, just a couple of Swedish massages and enjoying the pools, saunas, and hot tubs. Then lunch on site at the resort and we are off to either a winery or some hiking after that. Maybe both, we’re playing it by ear. Some good friends of ours recently moved to Austin, and if plans work out, we’ll be able to hook up with them. If not, we’ll be going back for a visit. After all, there’s an awesome Brew Shed that is waiting to be outfitted, and I’ll have to help!

The weather is supposed to be bright and sunny - a far cry from what we were thinking at the beginning of this week. Thankfully Hurricane Gustavo didn’t affect our relatives much in Louisiana and then loop around into Texas. There is a limb of a tree that hit the porch roof of Chris’ aunt and uncles house - but no reports of water or flood damage. The storm surge was the big worry, and it wasn’t looking too good for a while. Let’s hope that Hanna, Ike, and Josephine stay away and won’t do much to the Eastern seaboard.

This week was the first time our new housekeeper came. She will be coming every two weeks. The place looks and smells awesome, now. We are also getting the girls groomed more often, now, so both of those should go a long way to freeing us from massive cleaning marathons that we’ve been doing.

Wine & Beer Update. I racked the Cynthiana off the gross lees, and inoculated with the malolactic culture for secondary fermentation - also referred to as malolactic fermentation. This should go for about 3 months. With that, the Apfelwein fermenting, the strawberry wine stabilized and bulk aging, the pinot gris bottled, and the Belgian Tripel aging - I’ve got all wine and beer tasks squared away for a while. Now I’m just waiting for the weather to break so I can get back to brewing some beer!

Au revoir!

2007 Yakima Valley Pinot Gris — Bottled

I just wrapped up bottling the Pinot Gris I’ve had bulk aging. In a couple of weeks it should be pretty tasty.
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Testing Free SO2

Last night I tested for the free SO2 level in the wine tonight. I used the CHEMetrics Titrets for testing, and it was kinda fun and neat to do.

Essentially, you let a little of the wine into the ampule, shake it, and wait for the color to change. It’s supposed to go from dark blue to colorless - if you are testing a white wine. For a red it’s a lot harder to read, so I ran two tests. I think I’m around 20-25 PPM for the sulfite level.

I’m testing this because to inoculate the wine with the malolactic bacteria for fermentation, I should be at 15 PPM or lower.

I also tested the pH level, and that was 3.87. It’s risen a little during primary fermentation, which is expected.

Pressing

This weekend I pressed the wine off the skins. A couple of reasons dictated the timing: the coloring was sufficient, I didn’t want to extract more harsh tannins as the alcohol level rose, and the gravity dropped to 1.000.

The local homebrew and winemaking store had a #35 ratchet press for rent, so I picked that up Saturday morning. After a quick cleaning and sanitizing, we started to scoop the must into the basket. After the free run wine was collected and funneled into the carboy, pressing began.

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Fermentation

It is the evening of August 19th, and we’ve had fermentation going steady now for about 36 hours. I’ve performed three punch down’s already. This last punch down, I took a sample with the wine thief to evaluate the color, smell, and taste. I have to admit, the smell was repulsive enough to not warrant a taste — but I understand that this can be normal. The color is a very deep red/purple - so that is really good. I will be racking and pressing off the skins this weekend.

The sample I took had a good amount of pulp in it, so much so that the wine thief clogged up. It will be interesting to see how many inches of gross lees accumulate once I rack. Knowing this, and seeing how little juice is coming from this grape, I’m revising my expectation of final wine volume downward. I hesitate to state a number, but I’ll say it will be maybe in the 9-10 gallon range. This is revised from ~14 gallons. This would put this grape at a ratio of about 23 pounds to 1 gallon of juice — which is pretty high. To give some sort of reference, I’ve seen a rule of thumb at around 15-16 to 1.

There are reasons why vitis vinifera are the preferred wine grape, and I’m learning that all the time.

The “cellar” is working out well. Ambient temp staying between 65* to 70*. I stuck my hand close to the wine when I was punching down, and it was considerably warmer. Them yeasties are workin’!

Harvest 2008 Wrap-up

Well, this weekend flew by…

Some numbers:

• A total of 222 pounds harvested.
• This came in at around 30 gallons, split into two fermenters.
• Took us close to 2.5 hours to harvest.
• 19.5 Brix
• 6.5 TA
• 3.4 pH
• Cold soaked for 24 hours.

Tons of pictures taken, as well as two videos showing the crushing and destemming of the grapes.

• Picture album - This will be updated as the wine progresses.
• Video #1
• Video #2

I just stepped the yeast up to 800ml starters, and pitched them. It will take them a while to acclimate to the must temperature, as it’s still a bit chilly from the dry ice.

I’m beat - heading to bed.

Harvest 2008!

Tomorrow morning is the harvest of the Cynthiana, which I will attempt to make a decent red table wine from. The total take is planned to be 250 pounds, which approximates out to 14.5 gallons of finished wine, or roughly 68 bottles.

I should state up front that experienced winemakers have said that Cynthiana is a difficult grape to work with. It is known to have a high acid level, and you often have to add sugar (chaptalize in winemaking parlance) to bring the alcohol level up. It’s been said that Cynthiana “has no personality”. I do have a choice of tools and a great source of knowledge at my disposal to turn to, though.

In the end I hope to have a bouquet that is fruit-forward and a taste that is rich and slightly oaky, leaving you with a dry red table wine that is decently balanced. At the very least I hope it is drinkable. At most, I will have been able to capture the flavor of Cynthiana and have made a robust red wine that will endure aging - similar to Cabernet Sauvginon.

The camera will be taken and I will be documenting this with pictures.

.08

That is how much quicker the US team beat the French team in the Men’s 4×100m swimming relay. New world record. Michael Phelps’ 2nd gold. Story and video here.

GO USA!

Cleanup and Preparation

This weekend I spent some time straightening up the beer and wine “room”, to prepare for the Cynthiana load. The following is a rough layout of the “room”:

Here’s a couple of pictures I snapped:

You can see that I added a rug to the “room”, so that the glass carboys aren’t sitting on the tile. If you look at a carboy wrong, they seem to break. I also laid down a tarp, in case any sloshing occurred from punching down the Cynthiana wine caps.

A close up of the carboys and shelf:

The shelf above the carboys is devoted to chemistry testing of the wines. The opposite side shelf has all of the cleaning and sanitation chemicals. (i.e. yesterday’s post about the Pot-Meta 10% solution.)

Overall the “room” seems to have more space and flow better. It was nice to finally get organized.

Advice

Word of caution: When mixing up a 10% Potassium Metabisulfite solution, try not to inhale the fumes.

In other news, I’ve developed a new way to eliminate nose hair.