2009 Syrah - Day 63 - Racking

Having a little extra labor around as a result of the holidays, it seemed like an excellent chance to rack the Syrah. I was hoping to take advantage of the cold late-December temperatures to drop the tartaric acid crystals from solution in the wine. Unfortunately rushing out of my parent's house on Christmas Day, I forgot to grab my siphon and carboy and as a result was a few key pieces of equipment short of what we needed for an efficient and effective racking. So as soon as the brew store in Sacramento opened the day after Christmas I was there with Spencer and Matt to get what we needed. This delay let it warm up into the the 50s, so the temperature was probably too warm to pull the tartaric crystals out. Guess we'll need to be a little more on point next time we rack the wine.

With a new carboy and small diameter siphon in hand we set to racking the wine. As this was our first endeavor that we didn't have an easy siphon, we struggled to find a sanitary way to get siphon started without the ease of a one-way valve.

Basically it was amateur hour of us trying different ways to get enough liquid in the tube to get the siphon started. We tried everything from using a straw to get it started to crinking the hose and pumping. All to no avail. The siphon refused to get started well enough for gravity to take over. Finally we went back to the book we'd been referencing and reread the racking section.

We basically settled on you can't start the siphon without some amount of cross contamination (if you're lacking a one-way valve). The book recommended using your mouth to start the siphon and then treating the transferred wine with a dose of sulfites to kill any contaminants. I wasn't particularly happy with this solution, but nothing better was presenting itself so we went for it.

After we got the siphon going it was just a matter of waiting for the smaller diameter tube to drain each of the carboys. It took awhile for the 38 gallons to pass through the small diameter tube of the siphon. That worked out OK, since we only had one extra carboy and it gave us enough a gap between steps to clean the lees out of the most recently emptied carboy, sanitize it and then measure and dilute the sulfites before we needed to start filling the new carboy without losing our siphon.

Another thing we made a conscious effort to do was to aerate the wine. Racking it the one time it is a good thing to have the wine exposed to air. A little bit of oxygen helps to kick into gear that last remaining yeast so they can burn through the remnants of sugar that might have made it through the secondary fermentation. It also gives the malolactic bacteria a little bit of a nudge, since the wine is oxygen poor after all the biological activity that's been taking place in it. After this racking, one of the main goals of the vintner is to protect the wine from exposure to air and light. These can damage the wine. One way to minimize exposure to air it to make sure the wine is filled all the way to the neck of the carboys. This gives the surface of the wine a minimal exposure to the air and thus minimizes the oxidation of the wine.

We also tried to minimize our wine lost during each racking by tipping the carboys on their side as the siphon was drawing near the bottom. This does stir up a little bit of the lees, but it also allows the siphon to capture a little more of the wine that would otherwise be left on the lees and dumped out on the lawn. It doesn't disturb the lees too much as it tends to be a heavier sludge than the wine we were trying to siphon.

Most sources say you expect to lose about 10% of your volume during the first racking. This may seem like a lot, but it's the price you pay for clean and clear wine. This batch ended up only losing about 2.5 gallons (out of 38 siphoned), a little less than the amount expected. I'd like to chalk that up to careful siphoning, but we may have also pulled a little bit more yeast than is ideal into the next round of aging the wine. Only time will tell.

The wine tasted good. The malolactic fermentation was further along than the Cabernet. This was a surprise since the Syrah was stored in a much colder environment than the Cab (my garage for the Syrah, Luke's closet for the Cab). The colder temperature is supposed to inhibit the bacteria's progress and growth. Unfortunately the dose of sulfides likely arrested the malolactic fermentation by killing all the bacteria that we inoculated the wine with. That will need to be something we need to pay attention to the next time we rack the wine. The secondary fermentation tasted like it was close to done, if not completely finished. We didn't put a sample through the hydrometer, but I will probably try to do it next weekend so that we can have a few hard numbers to work with, same probably should be true for an acid titration. It's been since primary fermentation that we've looked at those numbers and an update on the progress would give us a look into the progress the wine has made. There was a little carbonation in the wine too, though not as much as in the Cabernet. Other than that the wine tasted good, but it definitely needs a bit more time for the flavors to develop and to clarify further. I'm thinking the next racking should be two or three months down the line, but we will see.

Cabernet Sauvignon - Day 68-ish - First Racking

Last night we finally got around to doing our first racking on the small batch of Cabernet Sauvignon that Mr. Sauer was kind enough to get started while I was out of the country in late September and early October. After a few weeks in his garage and a few more weeks in his hall closet it was time to get the wine off the yeast and other sediments that didn't get pressed out two months ago (has it really been that long?).

The first step in racking (after the obligatory sanitizing of every instrument and surface that will contact the wine) is to siphon the wine from the container its been in to the container where it will do the next leg of its journey. For us, this was from one 6.5 gallon carboy to another 6.5 gallon carboy. Nothing too revolutionary here. We used my easy siphon that employs a one-way valve and two different diameter tubes to get a siphon going without too much effort. This beats risking of contamination by sucking on the line at the bottom of the siphon until gravity takes over.

Once the siphon gets going there really isn't much to do other than keep the siphon's intake away from the yeast and other sediments that have settled to the bottom of the carboy. This mostly leads to sitting around holding the siphon's neck. Good excuse to work on the bottle of wine we opened with dinner, try and come up with New Years plans and catch up on our idle chatter.

Once the wine starts getting down towards the bottom of the carboy a little more attention is required. The goal is to leave as little of the wine as possible on the lees, but also to transfer as little of the lees into the new carboy as possible. This is where a little more focus on the part of the racker is required. The racker needs to keep the siphon intake out of the yeast and sediment at the bottom of the wine's old container (the "lees" of the wine), but also keep the siphon intake in the liquid since if it starts slurping air, the siphon's integrity can be broken and the air bubbles could bring it all to a halt. Not stopping the siphon is especially important, since when you near the end there often isn't enough liquid to restart the siphon without sucking up a significant amount of sludge that's settled to the bottom of the carboy.

This tension between quality and quantity of the finished wine is a delicate balance. Almost any vintner is reluctant to see wine abandoned and wasted by being left behind on the lees, but careful attention needs to be paid to not carrying over too much of the yeast and the flavors the lees will impart if it remains on the wine too long. A little tip of the carboy we're siphoning out of won't disturb too much of the settled yeast, but will allow us to capture more of the wine that is near the bottom of the carboy. Though it's really a judgment call how close a vintner wants to "scrape the bottom of the barrel" to keep from wasting wine.

After the siphon transferred as much of the wine as we were able, we were left with a little bit of waste product and more room in the fresh carboy than is ideal. Since we want to minimize the surface area of the wine exposed to air as a means to minimize oxidation we needed to fill the carboy to the neck. There are a few different means of accomplishing this when there is a gap after racking. One is to fill the new carboy with some medium that will raise the volume of the liquid so the wine fills the carboy to the neck. This could be accomplished with glass marbles or possibly oak chips/balls/staves. Oak products should be closely monitored, since they will affect the finished flavor of the wine and can result in an over-oaked flavor if the wine isn't taken off the oak when it reaches the desired flavor. As we had neither oak chip nor marbles handy we opted for increasing the volume of the wine with some off the shelf Cab from the liquor store across the street from Luke's house. Not ideal, but with the limited options at 10:30 last night, it was our best solution.

We no longer can call our wine exclusively Napa Valley (we ended up adding 750 ml's of an Australian Cab and a California Cab), but we did eliminate this air gap, so that it will be ready to undergo the next leg of the racking process with risking oxidation of the wine.

Finally we did manage to taste a bit of the wine. The malolactic fermentation had mellowed some of the acid taste in the wine, but there was still a long way to go. The malolactic fermentation is something we'll need to closely monitor during the next racking or two to ensure that it finishes its work on the wine. The secondary fermentation had also left some residual carbon dioxide in the wine. You could definitely taste/feel the pinprick of bubbles in the wine. This mild carbonation should slowly dissipate. The goal is to have it all gone before we bottle. This carbon dioxide isn't all bad. As the wine slowly off-gases the carbon dioxide, it maintains a blanket of the gas over the surface of the wine. This layer of gas acts as a natural protection for the wine preventing wild microorganisms from colonizing the wine. When we no longer taste or feel the CO2 bubbles it will probably be necessary for us to protect our wine with another small dose of sulfites to keep it from getting contaminated. Overall, so far so good and our wine is well on its way to being a bottle-able finished product.

Sources of Knowledge

I'd like to imagine that the viticulture and enology coursework I did as an undergrad was a valuable part of my present knowledge base in wine making. Alas, most of the wine classes I took at UC Davis were very wide brushstrokes and left me with little practical knowledge or experience. Some of the upper level courses may have alleviated this distance, but my inability to pass organic chemistry prevented me from proving or disproving this hypothesis.

Instead my current wine making knowledge comes from more readily accessible sources. Specifically a book uncovered by Luke has been the source of most of my knowledge and my go-to reference for this wine making endeavor. The Way to Make Wine: How to Craft Superb Table Wines at Home by Sheridan Warrick has been an invaluable resource to helping us get through our first two batches of wine. It's straightforward approach to wine making goes a long way towards pulling away the veil of mystery that shrouded the art. The chapters are well organized and warn you of the various perils and issues you will run into along the way. The book is thankfully equipped with a good index, which is a vital tool when you might read through a process and then need to relearn how to do a specific step months later. The book is also thankfully written with beginners in mind and definitions are included and explained. I can't recommend the book enough as a resource for the first time vintner or someone who has a little more to learn about wine making.

Syrah - Day 47 - Finished Cutting the Template

After a lot of trimming and shaving down all the burs, repair tape and fragile letters I've finished cutting out the template for our "labels." Nothing too dramatic. Now we just need a can of spray paint to test out the label and see if it's going to do the job and if the scotch taped sections are going to hold. I'm also considering doing a second stencil that would go behind the first one and add another level of complexity to the operation/design. Any ideas on what the stencil could depict?

Or should we stick with the less labor intensive approach? I'm always a fan of not having to paint our 200 bottles twice.

How to move a precious 6.5 Gal of Wine?

Looks like I will be moving at the end of the month which leaves me with an important question...how do you move a fragile and very full 6.5 gal carboy containing your precious Cabernet? It took all of my concentration and strength to bring the damn thing from the garage to my closet upsatirs...a cross-town move might prove interesting.

Syrah - Day 38 - Label Stencil Cutting

Made a little progress on the stencil for our wine bottle labels this week. Went shopping for some stencil supplies. Couldn't find the plastic that's recommended for screen print stencils, so went with some quilt pattern making supplies (mostly because it's the only flexible plastic I could find). Not ideal, the material is a little thicker than it needs to be and is designed to be cut with scissors, not a knife blade. This has complicated the cutting out of the stencil, since more force is required to punch through the plastic with the razor blade. The markings on the plastic help make it easy to line everything up and will make using the stencil easier since ensuring the stencil is straight on the bottle is as easy as lining up the marks on the back side.

My first attempt to print the stencil design directly onto the plastic sheet didn't dry-out and ended up being a smeary mess that needed to be wiped off. After that failure I opted to print out an image of the stencil and tape the plastic for the stencil over the image and cut through the plastic onto the image. The going's been slow, but I'm working on being careful and trying to get all the little plastic shards and shavings that the exactoblade leaves behind. I did have one part of the stencil that broke during cutting. I patched it up with scotch tape and am optimistic that will holdup. We'll see if that's true after I finish the stencil and do a couple test paints.

The stencil still isn't finished yet. Though one good tip I picked up was to start in the intricate cuts in the middle, since as you work your way out the stencil becomes more delicate as the supporting pieces are cut away. Starting in those spots allows you to manhandle the delicate parts a little more without fear they will come apart. Still a little ways to go. Hopefully I'll finish it up Monday or Tuesday next week. Then comes the opportunity to play with spray paint.

I still have 4 more sheets so if this one doesn't work out, I can do a few more attempts before I need to head back to the store. I'm also interested in maybe making a few different designs, either ones that can be overlaid/underlain with the one I am currently making or that can be used one their own to give us a few more label options.

Syrah - Day 31 - Collecting Bottles

Just a quick reminder that even though bottling is still several months away, it's never too early to start collecting and saving bottles. Especially with holiday gatherings, there should be several opportunities over the next several months to bank up enough bottles to save buying cases of empty bottles when it comes time to encase our own wine in glass.

A few things to be aware of:
Save only bottles that are corked. Screwtop bottles have a different diameter neck and can't be stopped with a standard size cork. Just recycle screwtopped bottles. Champagne and sparkling wine bottles can accept a normal wine cork, so save these, they can also be stopped with a bottle cap, this makes these bottles useful for both beer and wine. Capped champagne bottles are great for doing ongoing tests or tastings as the wine matures without using an entire bottle, as you probably would if the sample bottle were corked.

Clear wine bottles are not as desirable. They let in light, which can damage the wine's flavor as it ages. Clear wine bottles are better for white wines or wines that will be drank without much aging. Our Syrah that is still undergoing secondary fermentation should be expected to age for longer than a clear bottle would make advisable.

Also remember to keep wine case boxes as you collect bottles. The bottles will need to be stored and transferred, both before and after they are filled with wine. It's no fun shuttling around bottles an armload at a time. Save your cardboard cases.

Wash the bottles you save soon after finishing their contents. As I learned from bottling several batches of homebrew beer: bottling is already a labor intensive project, don't complicate it by requiring a thorough wash and rinse of every bottle before sanitizing. It's pretty disgusting and time consuming to wash hundreds of bottles to clean out the little bit of bacteria and mold that inevitably grow on the dregs left in the bottle. It's much easier and significantly less gross to rinse the bottle two or three times right after emptying it of its initial contents.

For the record we will need in the neighborhood of 200 bottles to hold 38 gallons of finished wine. Time to start saving.

Syrah - Day 28 - Secondary Fermentation

Secondary fermentation is still underway for our Syrah. The airlocks still gurgle to release carbon dioxide every so often as the remaining yeast churn through the residual sugar in the wine. With the temperature dropping, biological activity in the wine is slowing down, the secondary fermentation probably will still take several more weeks due to the cool temperatures. The malolactic fermentation is also ongoing, though this does not generate the outward signs the yeast's fermentation does. The malolactic fermentation will likely continue until to first racking and even possibly beyond, depending on how slowly the temperature causes the bacteria to work.

Another passive process that's going on is the settling out of the sediments in the wine. These sediments are composed of dirt from the vineyard, yeast cells, grape pulp, grapes skins and other particles in the wine that weren't filtered out when we pressed the must. By letting the wine sit undisturbed for weeks at a time, these particles slowly succumb to gravity and settle out of solution at the bottom of the carboy. After weeks or months of quietly accumulating the sediments at the bottom of the carboys, we will be able to separate them from the wine in the process called racking. This process involves siphoning off the wine while leaving as much of the sediment as possible behind. The other goal in the racking process is to leave as little as possible of the wine behind with the sediments.

The settling and racking process will be repeated a few times over the coming months. We can also assist the process by adding agents that will attract the particles and help them settle to the bottom. This will allow us to have as clear a wine as our patience and continued rackings will yield. Racking often also minimizes the flavors of the sediments from carrying through to the finished wine.

If one of the rackings occurs during especially cold conditions it will also allow us to remove the tartaric crystals from the wine, since these acid crystals come out of solution in the wine at low temperatures. These crystals appear similar to broken glass and are considered undesirable in the finished wine. They can occasionally be found at the bottom of bottles of wine or in the last pour from a bottle. Hopefully for both the wine and the coming snow sport season, the temperature will drop to freezing and allow us to remove the tartaric crystals during one of our upcoming rackings.

Speaking of racking, the batch Cabernet Sauvignon we did prior to the Syrah should be almost due to rack for the first time, we might need to hop on that...

Syrah - Day 21 - Malolactic Innoculation

Despite the large emphasis we have been putting on sanitation up to this point, not all bacteria are bad for wine. There are some bacteria that have positive effects on wine. One such bacteria that is often used in wine making is Oenococcus oeni, or the bacteria responsible for malolactic fermentation.

This bacteria changes the harsh malic acid present in the wine into lactic acid. This transformation reduces the bitterness of the wine, changing sour apple flavors into smoother buttery flavors and adds to the wine's fruitiness. It also slightly raises the pH of the wine, since lactic acid is a weaker acid than malic acid.

Not all wine should undergo malolactic fermentation. Almost all red wines benefit from it, but some light varietals of white wine lose their crisp edge when the acids are reduced. Generally these are Pinot Gris, Sauvignon Blanc and German whites that suffer at the hands (flagellum?) of the bacteria. Those light wines are also unable to mask some of the other flavors created by the bacteria, such as diactyls that get tucked under the rug in most red wines.

Timing of the malolactic fermentation is debatable. There are a few vintners that add malolactic bacteria at the same time as the yeast, there are a few problems with this approach. If you add the malolactic bacteria at such an early stage in the wine making process, you severely hamper your ability to use sulfites to prevent unwanted bacteria from taking hold, since the sulfites would kill the malolactic bacteria alongside any undesirable microorganisms. Another danger of adding the malolactic bacteria too early is it can start competing with the yeast for sugars and then use those sugars to create acetate acid or the main ingredient in vinegar. Generally, from the sources I've read, you want to start the malolactic fermentation around when the sugar in the must/wine is near zero. This can be at the end of primary fermentation, during secondary fermentation or even after the first or second racking.

For our batch of Syrah, the malolactic fermentation is being started 8 days into the secondary fermentation. This is based somewhat on convenience and somewhat on the need to do malolactic fermentation before the temperature gets too cold for the bacteria to survive (With a 40 F morning today, that may be too late. Seeing as O. oeni thrive at roughly the same conditions as yeast [60-80 F]).

In order to inoculate some carboys with malolactic bacteria, first sanitize the measuring dish. Then calculate the amount of freeze dried Oenococcus oeni needed to add to each carboy: Our 2.5 g package was meant for a 66 gallon batch, that breaks that down into .12 grams of freeze dried bacteria for 5 gallons; .7 for the three gallon carboy; and trace amounts to the three 750 ml bottles. Then it is a simple matter of weighing the bacteria dosage and adding it to each of the carboys. Once added, it quickly dissolves and (hopefully) sets about its business. Ideally the cold won't put an undue stress on the bacteria and malolactic fermentation gets underway soon in our wine.

Syrah - Day 20 - Label Design

We're still many months away from bottling our wine, but it's never too early to start doing the design work for our label. Based on the little experience I have from bottling beer, paper labels can be a headache. In the past I've tried labels that can be fed through a laser printer and can be applied to surfaces like a sticker (such as the Avery brand labels). They are great when you are starting with new, clean bottles. But by the time the bottle comes back for a second use, the sticker become a problem. The sticker part is a little too effective and requires a lot of scrubbing and soaking to get off the bottle. On a single bottle this isn't necessarily a problem, but increase the scale a hundred fold and your talking about an all day project of cleaning bottles so you can use them again. Many of my beer bottles retain several layers of stickum and tattered label from various previous bottlings, not ideal. In order to avoid this headache we're exploring other options for labeling.

This time around, I'm planning on trying out a different approach of labeling bottles. Inspired by the Rouge Brewery Bottles, I am trying to design a stencil that would be easy to paint onto the bottles (read: not too many layers), but would still be interesting.

The other ideas I had for it would that there was a large enough section on the label that the particular details of the wine could be written on with a grease pen or other non-permanent writing. This would allow us to reuse the bottles, but still be able to distinguish different vintages, varietals or other differences in the wine. Especially since we are producing two different varietals this year and could further complicate the matter with opting to age some of each of the batches on oak, blend some portion of the batches together, blend oak aged with non-oak aged or other combinations as we get inspired.

So for the rough draft of the wine label, I created this 15-minute-mock-up for the stencil, via Microsoft Paint (note, the black portions are what would be cut out of the stencil and therefore painted onto the wine bottle):

Still needs some work. One advantage of a stencil over a printed label, is I can make up for lack of abilities as a digital graphic artist later on when I turn the computer printout into a cardboard or plastic stencil. So those rough edges will be getting smoothed out either by someone else on a computer or by me in analog.

Slightly more interesting than the standard, default label for home winemakers: masking tape.

Syrah - Day 13 - Pressing the Must

Pressing the wine is quite a flurry of activity after mostly just waiting around for the must to ferment its sugar away. After only doing a few punch downs a day and enough tests to keep abreast of where the wine is in its primary fermentation, it's time for some action. Specifically, it's time to remove the wine (you finally get to call it wine), from the seeds, skins, stems and other detritus from the vineyard that made it into the must. This is accomplished by use of a wine press.

A basket press has not advanced much from previous generations of winemaking. It's basically a wooden big sieve that allows you to apply pressure to the contents. There are more modern options out there such as a bladder press, but for a batch of 400 pounds, that's overkill, plus half the fun of using a press is trying to figure out how to operate the mechanism and taking long enough to enjoy a few beers with your friends.

The basket press works when you start placing the contents of your fermentation tanks into it. A majority of the wine freely runs out of the press. The skins that are left behind still retain lots of wine, so once the press is full of the seeds, skins and whatever else (referred to as pomace), you start to press the contents. The key for pressing is not to press too hard. If too much pressure is applied that seeds crack or break, the wine will pick up too many sharp tannins and taste harsh. The press is designed to get as much of the wine as possible, but not press so hard as to crush the seeds and extract the undesirable tannins.



After the pommace's been pressed once it's called "the cake." The cake is a relatively solid block of skins seeds and grape pulp. However there are still portions to the interior of the cake that retain some wine, so you should stir up the contents and give them another squeeze. You're applying the same amount of force, but your attempting to get the grapes that, for-whatever-reason, didn't have all of the liquid squeezed out, another chance to contribute their wine to the final product. This is where a bladder press really shines, since all of the pomace is squeezed directly against the sieve portion of the press, the pressing process requires fewer time-consuming stirs and represses.

After the wine has been separated from the must, it's time to store it in airtight containers. Carboys are our choice. They are nonreactive, so they won't alter the flavor of the wine like plastic can do. Many vintners go with oak barrels, but seeing as we're relatively new at this and oak barrels are expensive, we're going with glass. Plus if we decide later on that we need to oak our Syrah, we can add oak chips, blocks, staves or balls to our wine and achieve close to the same effect at a much lower cost. Plus there is also the danger of over oaking the wine, which leads to the flavors of the fruit being overshadowed by the flavors of the oak. Oak barrels are also not airtight, they slowly evaporate wine, and therefor need to be regularly topped off. If the barrels of wine are allowed to get too low, the wine can oxidize.

Ideally each carboy should be filled to its neck. This creates the minimum amount of surface area for air to oxidize the wine. Just be aware there needs to be some airspace, since a little more fermentation still needs to occur.

Transferring the wine into the carboys is a pretty straight-forward affair. Capture the wine as it comes out of the press into a bucket and then dump the bucket into the carboy.


The sieve that we have in the funnel is a back up to the

press. It catches many of the particles that we will try and rack out of the wine in the coming months making it so we, hopefully, lose slightly less wine during each rack. Just be sure to clean the sieve when it stops draining well, nobody likes to see their wine spilling from the funnel onto the ground.

Once the last drop of wine has been squeezed out it's time to cleanup and get the wine stowed away. A thorough hose out of the press is necessary if you aspire to avoid the cleaning fee from the brew store renting the press. Be sure to get all the individual slats of the press and all the little corners that grape skins inevitably linger.

Finally, it's time to reward ourselves with Mexican. And don't forget to snag a taste of your wine. It's always good to remind yourself what all the time, labor and expense are for. Plus it's a good way to track the progress of your wine as it ages and under goes further fermentation. Nouveau wines are a worth a festival in many European countries, you might as well have your own private version with the freshest wine you'll ever taste as you clean up. Just don't have too much, the wine's flavor is only going to improve from here, as long as you do things right.

All that's left is ensuring you have the right space to age your wine. Air, heat and light are the enemies of wine. Air oxidizes the wine and gives bacteria the environment they need to survive and possibly flourish. Light will break down many of the desirable flavors you are hoping to develop in your wine and also provide bacteria with a better environment to grow. Notice how most wines sold in the store come in dark brown or green bottles. The reason behind that is prevent light damage to the finished product. Heat also breaks down flavors, it also can help bacteria grown if it's too warm. On the flip side, if it's too cold, the yeast can get killed before it finished the secondary fermentation or the (good) malolactic bacteria before it can break down the harsher acid flavors (though after secondary fermentation is complete, there are some good reasons to chill your wine). My garage is a little on the cold side, but we will be monitoring the temperature and make adjustment as needed.

Data on the must at time of pressing:
32 gallon: 1 Brix, 65 degrees F
20 gallon: .5 Brix, 64 degrees F
5 gallon: .25 Brix, 61 degrees F

Syrah - Day 11- Preparations for Pressing

A little bit of prep is necessary to make the press go well. Last month, Luke and I had a good press day for our batch of Cab. The basis of that day was all the wine making steps leading up to the press day, but also securing the resources to make a press go smoothly. Nobody wants to be in the situation where you run out of capacity for your pressed wine and frantically find a stopgap solution.

Therefore, the past few days I've been trying to get everything in order to do our press. I've checked on rental rates for presses. I've purchased enough carboy capacity to hold our pressed wine, along with airlocks and stoppers. The garage space has been cleaned out. There are even beers chilling in the fridge to keep the labor refreshed. Looks like we're going to be ready to go as soon as the must drops below 1 Brix, though doubtlessly there'll be something I've forgotten along the way...

Syrah - Day 10

After a brutal commute home (waiting on the train platform for 2-and-a-half hours is not my ideal way to spend an evening) I was able to get another test of the must in. The numbers are coming along nicely:

32 gallon fermenter: 69 F, 6 Brix
20 gallon fermenter: 69 F, 5.25 Brix
5 gallon fermenter: 65 F, 5 Brix

I'm still zeroing on Friday morning for the press, but Thursdays numbers will be revealing. Either way, I'm picking up some malolactic bacteria and the carboys we need for the secondary fermentation and aging this week.

Syrah - Day 9 - Sanitation

One aspect of wine making that has been unremarked upon up until this point is sanitation. Making wine is surprisingly dirty business. The grapes come out of the vineyard covered in everything and anything that came into contact with the grapes on the vines. This includes leaves, stems, tendrils, dust, dirt, spiders, and mold. The crushing process attempts to remove as much of these as possible, but even the best crusher/destemmers leave a fair amount of detritus in the must.

The vintner is then stuck trying to make wine out of must that includes more than just grapes juice, grape skins and seeds. The simple way to do this to kill everything that entered the wine with a dose of sulfites. This (hopefully) eliminates all the rogue yeast, bacteria and fungus that are inevitably present on the grapes. From the addition of the sulfites onwards, a winemaker needs to treat the must carefully, only allowing it to contact tools and additions that have been carefully sanitized. There are innumerable means of sanitizing your tools and implements, heating them above 160 degrees F, using chemical agents or only using items that come from a sanitary packaging or environments.

Heating all your implements above the temperature that kills microorganisms is not usually practical for a vintner. Many of the tools are plastic and would risk melting if heated above 160 F. Further it is not very convenient to have boiling water or a autoclave near your fermenters. Heating is much more practical for home brewing, where the residual heat of the wort is used to sanitize several parts of the process before fermentation is implemented. Since heat would break down many of the flavors wine makers are trying to capture this is doubly trouble some.

Therefore the main method of sanitation for wine making is chemicals that will kill microorganisms. The two primary chemicals I use are citric acid and iodine based sanitizers. Both come in concentrate forms that are available from home brew supply shops. They are both food grade sanitizers that when used in the appropriate concentrations should not leave a taste and effectively kill of potential contaminants. Other chemical sanitizers are available, but should be used with caution in food applications. Bleach is exceptionally effective at killing microorganisms, but it is very persistent and can end up killing the yeast, the microorganism whose growth winemakers are trying to promote. It also has a harsh taste that does not wash out easily. It should only be used for situations when equipment needs a harsh was, such as after a carboy has been allowed to mold after a long period of disuse, even then care should be exercised.

The best way to work with concentrated chemical sanitizers is to mix up a batch that's large enough for your needs and keep it in a container that allows you to reuse it multiple times to save time and chemicals.

The other means of sanitation is keeping sanitary substances from coming into contact with non-sanitary substances. Things like yeast additives and tartaric acid are additives that should not be heated or subjected to chemical sanitizers. If you are purchasing these additives to the wine from a reputable source (what did your mother tell you about buying chemicals off strangers in the streets?), you need to work under the assumption that the chemicals are manufactured and packaged in a sanitary environment. To keep the additives sanitary you need to ensure all the tools and containers the additives come in contact with have been properly sanitized. So when you are measuring the additives, the spoon and the container the additives are weighed in all need to be kept sanitary. It might be a pain, but it's the only way to ensure you're not adding a bacteria or fungus alongside the desirable additives.

Syrah - Day 8 - Electrical Heating Solutions

I accidentally deleted my photos off my camera before I was able to download them, so this post is going to be somewhat visually impaired. The addition of an electric blanket wrapping around the 20 gallon and 32 gallon fermenters has helped keep the must in both those fermenters from falling as far during the evening. Hopefully the must temperature will continue to creep up. The 5 gallon fermenter is also benefiting from the electric blanket, though it is only been wedged in the crook between the two larger fermenters, so it's not getting the full embrace the other two are getting.

The electric blanket required a little bit of creative engineering to power up. Since our garage is not wired with any electricity, there's now a large extension cord running from the kitchen of our house, out the back door, through the security gate and under the side door of the garage. This does have the added benefit of letting me set up a lamp in the garage so I don't have to get by like a coal miner, with just a headlamp to see by. But that's another one of the fun challenges with making wine. Others that have occurred unremarked upon until now: needing a tool to punch down the must, Luke went to the hardware store and built one out of stakes, brackets and screws, needing to move a bucket full of 280 pound of grapes and juice, I had to recruit a few friends over with temptations of beer and dinner.

Based on the progress of the must, it's looking like Friday is the target day for pressing. Now all I need to do is figure out where we're going to rent a basket press.

32 gallon: 64 F, 11 Brix
20 gallon: 66 F 10.5 Brix
5 gallon: 61 F, 12 Brix

Syrah - Day 7

Quick update:
The weather's been cold and the wine's progress has been inching along as a result. Today's numbers are for the 32 gallon fermenter 62 degrees F and 13.5 Brix. For the 20 gallon fermenter 62 degrees F and 13 Brix. Lastly, the 5 gallon batch is at 61 degree F and 12 Brix. Since we're hoping to see temperatures as much as 20 degrees higher than those, drastic measures need to be taken. I'm off to Target to get us an electric blanket to wrap the fermenters in and get those temperatures up with some mechanical aid.

Syrah - Day 5 - Tatric Acid, DAP and Temperature

Today started with finishing up a task left over from yesterday, raising the acid level of the smallest fermenter. We had some tartaric acid left over from our earlier batch of Cab. Using some quick calculations I determined that that to get the must within the desired range (6.0-8.0 total acid) we needed to add 46 g of tartaric acid [show your work: volume of must x .8 = volume of wine after pressing, (goal Total Acid - actual Total Acid in g/mL) x gallons of wine after pressing x 3.785 (to convert gallons to Liters) x 10 = grams of tartaric acid to to must, using our number (6.1 [goal acid] - 5.85 [actual acid]) x (4 gallons x .8) x 3.785 x 10 = 151 g of tartaric acid]. The tartaric acid is then mixed with water and then this solution is added to the fermenter and stirred in.

Based on yesterday's Brix numbers the must is getting close to the point where 1/3 of the sugars have been fermented. This is the point where a vintner is supposed to add DAP, a nutrient for the yeast, to the must. For every gallon of must, add 1 gram of DAP. I only had 48g of DAP, so I had to under each batch a little.

After measuring out the DAP for each fermenter add water, mix and add it to the fermenter. Nothing too fancy here.

Now that the additives have been placed in the fermenters it's time to make sure they get dispersed. Mixing the cap into the must, in the form of a punch down, is the easiest way to accomplish the mixture. Just make sure that the skins and detritus floating on the top gets mixed into the must.

The last issue that needs addressing today was the temperature of the fermenters. I took the temperature today, the 32 gallon fermenter was only at 60 degrees F, the 20 gallon fermenter was at 56 degrees F and the 5 gallon fermenter was at 54 F. With a goal temperature of 80 to 90 degrees during fermentation, that's too cold. The higher temperatures are necessary to develop some of the desirable flavors in red wine. In order to help our must reach these temperatures I pulled out a few old towels and blankets to insulate the fermenters. These insulators might get stained, but it's important to make sure our must is cuddled up snugly while it's still young and impressionable.

Syrah - Day 4 - Acid Test

Today was my first real go at the chemistry aspect of winemaking. I found myself dusting off skills I haven't used since I quit taking laboratory science classes 2nd year in college. Thankfully enough of those lessons were retained in my brain for me to pull off the basics enology requires. The first batch of test to run were about as straight forward as you get: take the temperature of your wine. The differences between the different size fermenters surprised me. The 32 gallon fermenter was 65 degrees F, the 20 gallon was slightly cooler at64 degrees and the 5 gallon came in at a downright frigid 59.5 degrees F. Considering all three are within a few feet of each other in my garage the disparity caught me off guard. Looks like I'll need to track the progress of each fermenter separately.

Next part of the wine that needed analysis is the sugar level. This is accomplished with a hand tool called a hydrometer. The hydrometer uses the density of the water to determine what the percentage sugar is, which is then translated into degrees Brix. I pulled a cup of juice from each fermenter and placed it in the sanitized test tube. Give the juice a moment to let the bubbles disperse and then gently drop the hydrometer into the juice. The hydrometer should float so that the narrow end is extending above the surface of the liquid, the level of the liquid should indicate on the scale what the percentage sugar is. The results came back at 18% from the 32 gallon fermenter, 17.5 for the 20 gallon fermenter and 18.5 for the 5 gallon bucket. There is still one more calculation to make. Since the hydrometer is calculated to 60 degrees F, and none of the juices tested were at that temperature, a little tweaking formula needs to be used. For ever degree above 60 degrees F add .03 to the Brix. Conversely for every degree below 60, subtract .03 Brix. Thus the final totals weren't substantially altered, but we're shooting for extra points for accuracy. Final total for the 32 gallon fermenter is 18.1 Brix, the 20 galloner is at 17.6 Brix and the 5 gallon fermenter's temperature difference gets rounded to 0 so the result remains 18.5 Brix.

The Last test for the day is the acid test. We did not get an acid test reading from the vineyard, so this one is our first reading of the acid level. We did get a pH reading, but the acid level and pH can differ enough to want to check both. A low acid level can lead to a weak tasting wine that isn't stable enough to age. Not something we want to deal with. If we're going to raise the acid level, now is the time to do it. All it takes is the right set of chemicals, a little juice and a steady hand with the titration.

First step in the process is to get yourself a acid test kit. Next you need 5 mL of juice to test. This measurement is important since the quantity of juice is a constant in the titration formula. Off a little bit in either direction will skew your reading high or low.

Add a little water, since the red of the juice will will mask the color change that will indicate when the Sodium Hydroxide has neutralized the acids in the wine. The last prep step is to add a few drops of the Phenolphthalein indicator. The indicator causes the color change when the pH of the solution hits 8.20.

Again precision when working with the Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH) is important. Draw 10mL of NaOH into the syringe. Add a little at a time to the juice solution. Adding more than .25 to .5 mL is not recommended, since you could overshoot the neutralization point and end up with an inaccurate reading. You also want to cap the testing chamber and give a stir after each addition NaOH from the syringe. This ensures that the entirety of the mixture is being neutralized by the NaOH.

There are a few color changes to be aware of. The first one is when the pink mixture of juice and water darkens, this is not the one to concern yourself with. The color change that indicates complete titration is when the mixture takes on a green tint.

When the green precipitate is visible immediate stop adding NaOH. Record the amount of NaOH remaining in the syringe. Then subtract that number from 10mL. That is the amount of NaOH it took to completely neutralize the acids in the juice. Then take the final number and multiple it by 1.5. This will give you the grams per Liter of acid present in the juice. In my fermenters it required 4.6mL of NaOH to neutralize the sample from the 32 gallon batch. In the 20 gallon bath it took 4.2mL. In the 5 gallon batch it only to 3.9mL. Apply the chemical reaction formula and the final numbers are 32 gallon: 6.9g/L; 20 gallon: 6.1g/L; and 5 gallon: 5.85g/L. For a dry red wine, the target acid level is between 6.0 and 8.0 g/L. Looks like we might need to add some acid to the 5 gallon batch.

That will have to wait for later. I've got a bit of clean up to do in the meantime.

For a recap:
- 32 gallon - 20 gallon - 5 gallon
Temp 65 F - 64 F - 59.5 F
Sugar 18 Brix - 17.5 Brix - 18.5 Brix
Acid 6.9 g/L - 6.1 g/L - 5.85 g/L