2011 Ferments

[kampervan]

ended up with 18 gal free run and 5 gal pressed from uner half the skins. just took free run from rest as doing a second run on some and cherry on rest

[Cellar_Rat]

Some interesting reading here, taken from the wineskills website (its in the public domain)

http://www.wineskills.co.uk/document...l-cowderoy.pdf

" simply shaking a ½ full bottle will give a fair idea if the wine is saturated." .....and he seemed such a sensible chap when I met him - have you been polluting his mind !!

[lockwood1956]

lol....


look into my eyes!


punched the cap down on the 2nd run when i got home from work, and it was the tioughest cap to sink i have ever come across

[Cellar_Rat]

too funny

[Cellar_Rat]

punched the cap down on the 2nd run when i got home from work, and it was the tioughest cap to sink i have ever come across

Must be something in the water - the primitivo its like punching down concrete.. Amazing

[Ted.B]

Pressed my Grenache today and ended up with just shy of 7 gallons from 5 boxes. I did add a litre and a half sugar syrup to each bin before pressing so an extra 3 litres in total. Started a second run on the skins using the concentrate from one of those cheap out of date kits I scored a while back.
Heaven knows how much Merlot I will end up with. Hope I have enough storage for it all.

[ukric]

punched the cap down on the 2nd run when i got home from work, and it was the tioughest cap to sink i have ever come across

To be fair there's a sizeable amount of skins in there

[robwrx]

A long day!

Decided not to press the skins in the end and vacuum racked the free run juice instead. Got a little over 30 litres each of the Sangiovese and Merlot from 7 boxes of each. Frozen some of the Merlot skins and then combined the remaining skins with 30 litres of sugar syrup at 1.080 to hopefully produce a light Chianti. Hopefully....

Trebbiano is still plodding away and is down to 1.015.

[Duffbeer]

Anyone made use of the compressor pumps yet?

[Rich]

I've put mine and Bri's in a box, to sort later.. so no.

Will sort out a sturdy box to put them in soon I hope. Then wire them up and put some pipe connections on.

They are 240v aren't they?

[Duffbeer]

Yup, sure are.

[SiSandrine]

Just been out to buy a couple of bits to hook them up so to answer the question no but nearly.

[SiSandrine]

Does anyone know what size tube the nipples on the vacuum pump takes. As I am not at home I can't check but assuming they are Harris filter tube sized (1/4"?).

[Duffbeer]

YUP, that is about right.

[SiSandrine]

I pressed my wines on Sunday - will upload pictures of the new (homemade) press in action in the next couple of days. 8.5 gallons sangiovese (from 6 boxes) and 7 gallons merlot (from 6). This includes a light pressing and the acid adjustments I made.
Colour extraction looks great, particulalrly as the suspended sediment starts to sink from the top.
I pitched the MLF culture last night that I bought from Karl (Brouwland). Followed everything to the letter but it does say don't rack until MLF is complete. I think I will struggle to do that given the level of sediment in some of the vessels.

Did anyone measure the PH of their musts by any chance? It was the one thing I couldn't check prior to pitching and I would like a sounding.