Today, we innoculated our 2011 Red Heaven Syrah. We estimated 1134 #s fruit = 108 gal must in the 43" macrobin = 70 gallons juice. The wild yeast was very active, so it appears we did not put enough Meta into the must on Saturday, the day after we received the container. Angie had added 20 ppm and Ray and Mike added approx 20ppm more. After confering with other pros, we decided to go ahead and add Red Pasteur yeast due to the high brix possibly being too high for the wild yeast to handle. (4 Tablespoons) along with nutrient. TA was .49, so we added 1 lb. of Tartaric Acid to bring the TA up to near 7. The PH for Angies container with 27 brix was 3.78 so we assumed the same for ours. We need to closely monitor the temp of the must and punch it down several times per day. We have ice ready to keep the temps down.
We need to get some supplies for the PH meter (base solution) and find our thief. We used 8 pkgs yeast leaving us with 7. I ordered 15 more from Brewcon, but have not heard back yet. Mike
