Cabernet PH Adjustment Information

Some research findings on adjusting PH.  But before we decide to adjust, we should verify the PH reading again. Our last PH adjustment didn't work out well partially because of a bad PH reading because the meter was going out. However, we are not surprised by the high PH reading because of the unusually high sugar/brix in the cabernet.  We should do a 2 point calibration with the meter. We should stir the must well and then filter some juice thru a coffee filter to ensure it's clean. We may also want to measure T.A.

 

The risks of not adjusting the PH are:

1. The wine will loose color.

2. The wine will become microbally unstable and will spoil.

3. To protect the wine we will have to use very high levels of Sulfites.

 

Adjusting PH:

The book "Techniques in Home Winemaking" advises against using acid blends because they contain citric acid which will make the wine taste sour. Instead use Tartaric acid.

 

You adjust the PH based on the volume of wine, not must.  In general estimate gallons of wine = 60% of total must volume.

 

We estimated 71G of must in each microbin. That would be about 42G of wine, or 159 liters.

We estimated 104G of must in the macrobin. That would be 62G of wine, or 235 liters.

 

We estimate that the average PH of the combined wines will be around 3.8, realizing it will increase by 0.1 to 0.2 after Malolactic Fermentation. We would like to get it down to 3.6, but may want to be conservative and just shoot for  PH of 3.7. Although remember that PH will rise again after MLF. So a 0.2 adjustment may be the minimum we want to do. We will have to discuss the options and decide. In general the less we do to the wine, the better.

 

PH Adjustment Formula & Amounts:

1 gram per liter of wine reduces the PH by 0.1 units.

 

159 grams of tartaric acid would lower the PH in the a small microbins by 0.1.

235 grams would lower PH in the large macrobin by 0.1.

 

The references state there are 5 grams of tartaric acid in 1tsp. So 0.2 tsp = 1 gram.

 

SMALL MICROBIN: 0.2 * 159 = 31.8 tsp (10.6 TBSP or 5.3 OZ) to adjust PH down to 3.7.

 

LARGE MACROBIN: 0.2 * 235 = 47 tsp (15 2/3 TBSP or 7.8 OZ).to adjust PH down to 3.7.

 

 

Last Crush Of The 08 Season

Ray and Bob went out to Williamsons and got 2,000lbs of cabernet. The fruit was picked that morning and into the afternoon and put into fruit boxes. Approx 20 pounds per box, and 100 boxes! All 100 boxes stacked into Troy's trailer with no problem.

Berries were small size, and smaller clusters. Seeds were evenly brown and stems were turning brown too. The fruit came in with some small leaves mixed into it. We picked them out as well as possible, but quite a few of the smaller pieces ended up in the must. The leaves were mostly dry.

We used the motorized crusher rented from BrewCon, which went fast. We crushed all 2,000lbs in just under 2 hours. Much faster than if we had to use the hand crank crusher.  We did several adjustments on the machine to try and get the crush size right. We may have ended up too small because the grapes were crushed/squashed more than usual which exposed the seeds. It also had a side-effect of more "empty" skins were ejected out with the stems (we estimate 50# of skins went into the trash).

We measured 246G of must total, split into 2 microbins (71G each) and 1 macro bin (104G). Volume of must was calculated using the following formula, which we've used several times now. We added just under 3TBSP of meta to sanatize the microbins and 4TBSP + 1tsp to the larger macrobin.

(Depth In Inches of the Must) *(L X W of microbin which is 43*43) * 7.48 / 12 * 12 * 12

We factored out the constants and simplified the equasion to:

Depth in Inches * 8.0038 = Gallons Of Must

The cabernet sugars were again higher than expected, with the PH coming in higher than we wanted. We sampled each bin and they had slightly different numbers, with an average of around 29 Brix and 3.8PH. We may want to do some acid adjustments on the must, but we agree we want to be cautious as our acid adjustments on the Chard in the past hasn't worked out very well. More investigation and discussion is needed. We will need to switch over again to the EC 1118 yeast to handle the higher alcohol. We might consider starting with the Pastur Red as we like the results--but we will need to have some of the EC1118 to finish the job.

MicroBin 1 29.5 Brix, 3.7 PH

MicroBin 2: 30 Brix, 3.9 PH

MacroBin 1: 28.5 Brix, 3.7 PH

We measured the Brix on the Clone 6, and it was around 3. It was at 10 Brix 3 days ago and will probably go another 4-5 days before the cap falls.

The day before we added 2 more TBSP of nutrient to the merlot, which is fermenting well but still very sweet.

We noticed the Sangio wine in the 5G carboy showed asignificant color gradient. We think the darker color on top is the cabernet that is still fermenting (it had higher sugars) and the lighter red below is the sangio. A very interesting effect. We should take a photo! (Photos from today have been uploaded to our shared online photo album.)

Sangio and ID Malbec Pressed

We pressed the Wood River Malbec and WA Sangiovese last night, Oct 28 2008. Both were fermented out with a soggy cap.

 

The Malbec was crushed on 10/18 and was on the skins 10 days. Color was immensely dark purple and flavor was very good--maybe the best Malbec we've had at this point. No hint of green flavors this year.  We got 48G of Malbec, pressing only lightly, and filled Lee's 30G French barrel, a 15G stainless keg, 2G carboys and 1G platypus.   

 

The Sangio was crushed on Oct 19th,  9 days on the skins.  The color was a lighter red color, until the pressed wine which was much darker and had much more flavor.  Flavors were a bit under-developed because of the low Brix, but it really picked up a lot of flavor the last couple days of fermentation. The Sangio included about 10G of clone-6 cabernet must that was co-fermented to help increase the low Sangio sugars and add extra flavor from the Cab skins (estimate 10% cab co-fermented). 

 

We got 70G of Sangio wine, more than expected because of the added 10G of cabernet must and we pressed very hard to get more flavors and tannins out of the lighter flavored must (WOW! What a difference in color and flavor.)  We put the Sangio into Troy's 15G Hungarian barrel, Michele's 15G hungarian barrel, 2 15G SS kegs, 9G carboys and 1G Platypus.  Michele will pick up her barrel and some carboys after the first racking in a week or so.

  

The Clone-6 Cab cap is starting to be less firm and the color/flavor is fanstastic! We want to keep the wine in contact with skins as long as possible to increase flavor/color/tannins. We moved it into the 2 plastic blue barrels to free the microbins up for Roger's cab that will be coming later this week (ETA Thursday 10/30).

 

The is Merlot fermenting well now with a very dense cap. Still very very sweet.

 

 

malbec & sangio ready to press

We checked sugars tonight.

malbec .996
sangio .997
clone-6 cab 10
merlot 30

We will press the sangio & malbec on tue. at 630pm

Merlot is starting slow. We added 6 pkgs of EC 1118 yeast & 2 tbsp
nutrient, as the initial starter got made with the 212 yeast..

Merlot Crushed Friday Oct 24

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Ray and Lee picked up a macro-bin of Merlot from Dennis at Wood River Friday morning .Estimate is for 900 pounds.  They also brought back an empty Macro Bin from Dennis to use for fermentation. We need to decide if we will keep it, or return it. Cost is $150.

 

Sugars were much higher than anticipated on the Merlot, coming in at 30.5 Brix! PH was 3.6, which is good (with the abnormally high brix we thought PH may have been too high).  We switched from Pastur Red to Lavin 1118 yeast, which can handle up to 18% alcohol. (30.5 brix will be about 17% alcohol!--good thing we are blending it).

 

Ray estimated we had 114G of must based on converting cubic feet in the macrobin to gallons, which he sanitized with 4.75 TBSP of meta (1/8tsp per gallon of must).  A note on our meta application this year vs. last year. Last year I believe we added meta based on gallons of finished wine. This year we are adding meta based on gallons of must.  The general range of SO2 application in the books is 50ppm to 100ppm.  We should sit down and figure out how the change in meta application will impact our SO2 ppm of finished wine.

 

Troy

Finished Bottling 07 Wines

Bottled the last 2 wines for the year. A Cab/Malbec blend and a Syrah/Malbec blend. About 22 cases total.  We expect 1,000lbs of Wood River Merlot on Friday in it's own bin, plus an extra bin for fermenting Roger's cab.  We can borrow buy the extra bin from Dennis.  The cab from Roger is expected some time next week, weather depending.

 

We did some other winery work while we bottled.

1. Racked the 08 WA Malbec from SS and glass into Lee's 15G barrel plus some carboys.

 

2. Transferred about 10G of Clone-6 Cab into the Sangiovase to help offset the low Sangio sugar levels and add some cab skins for co-fermentation flavor.  Lee had inoculated both earlier in the day: The cab with 5 of the Pastur Red yeast (to handle the higher alcohol) and the Sangio with 5 of the Lavin 212 yeast.  The ID Malbec is now fermenting strongly in the 2 plastic barrels w/ liners. Mike moved them on top of some foam to get them off the garage floor and keep them warmer for fermentation as it is getting cooler outside.

 

3. Got started cleaning barrels, starting with the ones that are needed first. Any barrel that had a sulphur wick burnt in it or had any off smells will get a 24hr soak with Proxy Clean followed by a meta/citric rinse. Otherwise they just got a meta/citric rinse and are upside down. Here are the ones that have been treated so far. The proxy soaked ones need to get emptied and meta/citric rinsed tonight.

 

• Lee's 15G French got a meta/citric rinse and now has the WA Malbec in it.
• Troy's 15G Hungarian got a meta/citric rinse and is upside down drying.
• Troy's 26G American got a meta/citric rinse and is upside down drying.
• Bob's 15G American is in a proxy soak because of the seep on the lower front head. We need to rub some wax into it or use some epoxy (we have another container) to try and seal it up.
• Lee's 30G French is in a proxy soak.
• Michele's 15G hungarian is leaking so it will be hydrated and then proxy soaked.

 

2008 Barrel Plan

• WA Malbec into Lee's 15G French barrel
• WA C6 Cab into Troy's 26G American barrel
• Sangio into Troy's 15G Hungarian barrel plus Michele's 15G Hungarian barrel
• ID Malbec into Lee's 30G French barrel
• Merlot into Mike's 2 30G Hungarian barrels
• Roger's cab into
  - Ray's new 30G French
  - Bob's 20G French
  - Ray's 22G French
  - Bob's 15G American
  - Michele's 13G French

 

 

 

Adjusting Sangio For Low Sugar

I looked at several references on how to handle the lower brix (21.5) of the WA Sangiovase.  In general the minimum acceptable is 21-22 Brix, so we are in that range and are OK.  We have several options.

 

1. Do nothing. The wine will get blended with more ripe cabernet when we make our Super Tuscan, and that will balance everything out.

 

2. Mix in a couple of 5G buckets of the Clone-6 cabernet into the Sangio for fermentation. That will raise the sugars some now and give extra co-fermentation advantages. The wine will get blended with more cab when we bottle the SUper Tuscan, which will round out the sugars and acids.

 

3. Mix in some sugar water. This raises the brix, which doesn't add any flavor just increases the alcohol level.

 

Option #1 is OK with me, but I think option #2 is better. The Clone-6 cab has high sugars (27 brix) and the co-fermentation with the cab skins will have some added benefits to the super tuscan flavors (co-fermentation is common for Super Tuscans).  I'd rather avoid adding sugar. The alcohol level will be plenty high by the time it's blended.

 

No matter which option we do, we need to press early because the sangio seeds are partially green, so we want to avoid extended contact with them. A faster fermentation and earlier pressing would help limit contact. So we should switch the yeast to Pastur Red and plan to press after a week.

 

We can talk about the options tonight and make a decision.

 

Troy

WA Grapes Crushed

Mike picked up the WA grapes on Sunday and drove them back to Boise. We got 625lbs of Sangiovase from Quality Nursery in Zillah and 500+lbs of Clone-6 Cabernet from RiverRock vineyard near Walla Walla. Quality Nursery packaged up the Sangiovase in a large cardboard box lined with heavy plastic, and the grapes were in good condition when we got them home with little crushed at the bottom. RiverRock picked the Clone-6 Cab into our small Microbin.  Both grapes came to use very very clean with very few leaves.  The Sangio berries were very large berry tight clusters and the Clone-6 was small sparse berries.  Both were very tasty! :-D

 

We crushed Sunday night using the electric crusher rented from Brewcon for $50.  The electric crusher worked great and chewed through the 1,200lbs of grapes in no time at all.  We defiantly want to use it for the TON of Roger's cabernet if possible.  The Sangiovase and Cabernet are both in Microbins for fermentation. We scooped the Wood River malbec out of 1 microbin and put it into 2 large plastic bins with fermentation liners so it would be easier to crush into the microbin.  We had lots of help from friends and neighbors that came by for the crush and cleaning out the extra stems that made their way into the must.  The stem-free must will make for nice clean flavors in the wine without any green stem taste.

 

The clone-6 cabernet was good and ripe and seeds were evenly brown.  Brix were a bit higher than expected, because our row is next to an access road in the middle of the vineyard and so it gets more sun. Brix were a solid 27 and PH was a bit high at 3.7.  (A spot check by Dennis at the vinyard a row or more over showed 25.5 brix.)  The Sagiovase was not quite ripe. Seeds were just starting to turn brown and the grape pulp was still tight around them. Although there weren't any "Green" flavors in the Sangiovase grape taste.  Brix was low at 21.5 with a high acids and a PH of 3.3.  We will have to decide if we want to do any modification to the Sangio to balance acids or sugars.  Since it is going to be blended with Cabernet, we might be fine as it will balance out the wine. We'll have to see what the numbers are on Roger's cab that we are going to blend with. It might work out by itself without any additions.

 

Must was sanitized with about 2.5TBSP meta for the cab and 3.33TBSP meta for the Sangiovase. Lee pulled out juice from each to do yeast starters before they were sanitized with the meta and will do a starter in 48 hours.  We are going to use the Lalvin RC 212 Bourgovin yeast on the Malbec and the Sangiovase because the Pastur Red yeast we normally use wasn't available.  We do have some Pastur Red and will use 5 packages for the Clone-6 cabernet as Pastur Red handles higher alcohol levels than Lavin RC212 (which peters out around 14% alcohol and 27 Brix will get closer to 15%).

 

 

WA Malbec Pressed

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We Pressed the 250lbs of Malbec from Zillah, WA last night. Brix were down to around 0.5 but the cap was still firm. Great flavor and color. Very promising.

We got about 20G of wine with a moderate pressing. The free-run was very fruit forward and even a little sweet while the pressed wine picked up tannins and became more tart. The wine is in a 15G stainless keg and glass carboys with bubblers or breathable bungs while we wait to bottle the rest of our wine. We will rack it into Lee's 15G French barrel after it settles for 2 weeks.

Malbec at 5 Brix

Fermentation on the Prosser Malbec is coming along very well. It has been in contact with the skins for 9 days now. Sugars are down to 5 brix. Color is amazing! Flavor still has some fruit sweetness and is very smooth.

 

We plan to press on Thursday into a stainless tank to finish fermentation. We're not pressing early on the Malbec this year as we don't taste any green flavors like we've had from the Idaho Malbec. will be interesting to see how it develops.   We aren't putting it into a barrel right now because the 15G barrels all have wine in them yet.

 

The fermentation liner bottom failed in the blue barrel. For the first couple days we just stirred around it, and then we took it out last night. I contacted Debra at Nampa Brewers who said she would replace it and contact her distributor about the failure.

 

Troy

 

New Barrel and Bottler

I just received a barrel to replace the 22 gal recoop that had been leaking and had been tainting the red wine.  This time I tried a different company, but I got essentially the same product.  The new company is 'Barrel Builders" from, I believe, St Helena, CA.  It is a 30 gal reprocessed French oak barrel, medium toast.  It cost $308 delivered.  Upon inspection, it appears rougher on the inside that the ReCoop product and the staves are thicker.  Perhaps less wood was removed during the refurb process.  The rep at BB said that they use a router rather than a plane to remove expose new surface in the barrel.  Don't know if that makes a difference.  It was used for red wine, obviously, since there are still stains around the bung hole.  The barrel is now in Lee's garage, ready to go to work.  The company also sells new American (Minnesota) oak barrels for $250.  They say that the American oak works very well for the heavier red wines such as Cab or Malbec.  We might consider one of those next.

 

The bottler came mail order from EC Kraus.  I purchased it blindly with absolutely no information as to how it worked, its quality or reliability, or anything else.  I just knew that a new bottler was badly needed and the sooner the better.  The description said that it was perfect for 50 to 500 gal batches.  Good enough for me.  It was delivered for $131.  I subsequently bought a couple hoses to fit it for another $22, but the hoses have large enough diameter and are long enough for multiple uses around the winery.  The first bottling proved that it probably was worth the investment.  It filled about 25 cases in an hour with only one person operating it. That should satisfy our needs for the foreseeable future. 

Malbec Fermentation Update

Mike brought back 250lbs of Malbec back from Zillah Washington and it was crushed on Monday into the small blue barrel with a fermentation liner and sanitized with approx 1 tbsp of meta (there was about 20-25G of must which will press out to 15-20G of juice).  Lee pulled some juice out before we added the meta to do a starter. He started it right away, but we wanted to wait 24-48h before adding to give the meta time to work. In the mean time the starter fizzled out.  :(  This hasn't happened in the past because we didn't pull the juice until we were ready for the starter (24 hours after crush). So we either need to be ready to add the starter earlier or to delay waiting to pull the starter juice.

 

I did a second starter Wednesday evening with 4pkgs of Pastur Red yeast and once it was going added a tbsp of nutrient and stirred it into the must at about 11pm. We will need to check it today and see if it is taking. The weather has cooled off so we may get a slower fermentation. We should probably get the bin off of the floor so it stays warmer (up on a foam block or rubber mat).  Also, the small bin is over 75% full which means the cap has the potential to push out. If it gets close then we will need to move it to a larger barrel. That may be a bit difficult because of needing a fermentation liner. We have a second we can use. We will order more.

 

Time to start the punch down rotations! Everyone please coordinate with Lee and help manage the punch downs.

 

Troy

2008 Wine

Here is a list of the grapes we are set-up to get this Fall, and which barrels I propose putting them in.  By dropping the dropping the Viognier and Syrah and scaling back our Malbec order from Dennis to a more reasonable level we have enough capacity to take all 2,000 pounds of Roger's cabernet! That will give us enough to do some great Cabernet blends this year and hold over 60G for a Reserve Cabernet.  Yea!

 

Take a quick look at the numbers, volumes and barrels and see if it looks right.

 

Troy

 

Wood River

 

- 500lbs Chard

 

- 1,000lbs Merlot

- 500 lbs Malbec

Williamson

- 2,000lbs Clone 2 Cabernet

RiverRock (WA)

- 400 lbs Clone 6 Cabernet

Prosser

- 250 lbs Malbec

- 700 lbs Sangiovese

 

Barrels:

2 15G Stainless Kegs: Chardonnay

Mike's 30G Hungarian #1: Wood River Merlot

Mike's 30G Hungarian #2: Wood River Merlot

Lee's 30G French: Wood River Malbec

Troy's 26G American: Williamson Cabernet

Ray's 30G New: Williamson Cabernet

Bob's 20G French: WA Clone 6 Cab

Ray's 22G French : Williamson Cabernet

Bob's 15G American: Williamson Cabernet

Troy's 15G Hungarian: Prosser Sangiovese (plus carboys/stainless for extra 10G)

Lee's 15G French: Prosser Malbec

Tom&Michel 15G Hungarian: Prosser Sangiovese (Moved to Michele's house after fermentation)

Tom&Michele 13G French: Williamson Cabernet (Moved to Michele's house after fermentation)

Chard racked off the gross lees

The chard was done fermenting and on Thursday we racked it out of the 60G fermentation barrel into 2 15G stainless steel kegs and and a 3G glass carboy.  We took a quick taste and liked what we have. It has lots of  body and acids, but isn't that tart squirt flavor.  We look forward to getting it into a bottle earlier this year to capture that clean fruit taste.  We'll let it settle for 3 weeks and then rack it again off of the settled lees and yeast cells.

 

The stainless kegs and carboys have breathable bungs on them so they can finish the last bit of fermentation.  The bungs are very tight and take extra effort to make sure they are in. We have moved to the larger size bung to make sure the bung doesn't get pushed out like the smaller one did last year.

 

The 60G barrel was rinsed clean and then a meta/citric rinse to help inhibit bacterial growth. In a few days once it is good and dry we will want to burn a sulphur wick and close it up.

 

07 Magnafique Bottled

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We bottled our 07 Magnafique last night. And it was MAG-NA-FIQUE!  It is a very tasty blend with a higher amount of Merlot this year making it smooth with ripe fruit flavors.  It has good complexity, structure and fruit from the cabernet and the malbec with a grippy finish from the 1% petit verdot.  It may be our best Magnafique yet!  Good thing, because we each have 6 cases of it! :P

 

We bottled about 72 gallons, 30 cases.  We used Ray's new triple-bottler, and it went very fast.  1 hour 15 minutes!  It was the largest single bottling to date and we had to blend into 2 different batches and then combine them as we bottled.

 

The blend ended up being

 

50% Wood River Merlot

40% Wood River Cabernet (Clone 8)

9% Wood River Malbec

1% Wood River Petit Verdot