[Cindy Scott]

Settled juice: temp 19.5
brix: 25.3
pH: 3.83
acid: 3.5
Blended skins/must and settled:
pH: 3.95
acid: 3.5
brix 25.7
Nice smelling must. Only doing a 2 day cold soak, will add Colour Pro instead of a longer soak.
Will add acid. We are happy with the brix as we will be blending this wine with last year’s Cab from Washington.

[Cindy Scott]

pH: 3.34
acid 9.5
Brix: 18.8

Andrew settled the juice, added another 100ppm, and added Lysozyme. When I came home from Vancouver on Sunday and put my nose into the carboy the first thing I smelled was vinegar. Not the strong kind of white, red or apple cider but more in the background – get the cooks in your family to smell your juice.

I believe that the grapes had started a wild ferment while sitting hence the brix numbers people are posting and the smell of vinegar. The acid is high because so many grapes had nothing left to them (hence all of the juice in the bottom of the bin). Doing research of whether or not these grapes can be savaged I read alot of articles and spoke with a commerical winemaker. Here is one article from Daniel Pambianchi https://techniquesinhomewinemaking.com/volatile-acidity-va/ I also spoke with a commerical wine makers who said: “About the only thing you could do with fruit that far gone is make feed for a brandy still.”
Andrew and I are not making wine from these grapes.

You know the saying “you can make bad wine from good grapes, you can’t make good wine from bad grapes.”

[Cindy Scott]

400lbs. VA detected Friday morning. Immediately racked off sediment and added 50ppm SO2. Two hours later, juice had no VA and tasted fine.
Settled and filtered juice for measurements – temp 20 degrees. Had different numbers in four different 23 L carboys. Two carboys were darker in colour with higher numbers.
Brix: 23.3 to 24.1
ph: 3.72 – 3.88
acid: 4.2 – 4.5
I blended juices: Brix:23.5 Ph: 3.74 acid 4.4
added 2g/l tartaric
Inoculated Friday night. Foaming, activity in airlock, Saturday morning. Smells clean.

[Cindy Scott]

Zin was inoculated Sunday afternoon Oct 5.
Evening of Oct 6, there was a slight movement on the brix downward. 25.6/25.8/25.5
Tuesday morning, cap is up. Brix is now up one point in all primaries.

Based on the extra week of hang time prior to picking along with high brix, I assume there was alot of dried grapes when picked. When I blended my sample and took a full mouthful and moved around in my mouth before spitting out, you could taste the “raisiny” taste. Therefore I am assuming that there are at least 1.0 °Brix units of what I’ll call “hidden sugar,” which are now releasing.

Don Graham – can you please comment if you are in agreement? I am trying to decide if I should add more water.

[Cindy Scott]

Wine sample blended, filtered, settled overnight.
Brix = 31.9
Ph 3.9
Acid 4.6

I removed some must (approx 75lbs) for port.
The remaining must was divided into 3 primaries (approx 133lbs grapes/must per primary).
To each primary I added 7 litres of water, 40 grams of tartaric acid.
Adjusted numbers:
Brix = 26.1
Ph = 3.51
Acid = 7.4

Am using the following yeast:
https://www.renaissanceyeast.com/en/products/maestoso

[Cindy Scott]

Our grapes went directly to the freezer; therefore have no numbers to post.

[Cindy Scott]

Sunday night – cap up – starting to ferment, 20 deg C. Added first feeding (Fermaid K & O).
Monday – sweet smell all day, final numbers at end of the day were 1.090, temp 22 deg C.
Tuesday 6:30 am – woke up to garage smell of rotten egg. Garage temp was 19 deg C.
Must temp was 33 deg C. SG was 1.052. Added 2nd & 3rd feeding and 4 more cap’s of B5.
Areated the must. Added two bags of ice to the must. Pushed down every two hours.
1:00pm. Smelling much better but still detecting egg. Temp down to 28 deg C. SG 1.042. Added 12 g for Fermaid O. Punched down hourly.
7:15 pm – temp back up to 31 deg C. SG 1.030. Garage door wide open all day. Moved drum outside.
10:00pm – temp down to 28 deg C. Still slight smell of egg. Flavour ok – different than grapes for port barrel but am using different yeast for port. Moved drum back inside, left garage door partially open all night, drum beside opening.
Wednesday 5:30am – Mike couldn’t detect any egg smell in garage or in must. Temp was 32 deg C. he moved drum outside.
7:30 – temp 25 deg C. SG 1.015. I can still detect some egg. Will do more aerating today.

The zin grapes for port barrel – fermenting sweet, temperature never above 28 deg C.
Reached SG of 1.035 last night – so brandy was added, moved outside to stop ferment.
All well this morning.

[Cindy Scott]

No. I don’t have numbers prior to adding the acidulated water.
My past experience with fermenting Lodi zin, is that when the Brix is high, the acid is typically low, so I knew I was safe adding some acid with the water.

[Cindy Scott]

Friday Sept 23 2:00pm
Brix 28.6
As I am making port wine from some of the zin grapes, I removed approx. 125lbs must to another primary.
To the remaining must, I added 13 litres of acidulated water. As I didn’t know the ph/acid yesterday, I didn’t follow the common practice of adding 7 grams of tartaric acid per 1 litre of water. I added 70 grams.
9:30pm – I put a juice sample into the fridge to settle overnight for testing Saturday.
Saturday Sept 24
12:30pm
16 degrees
Brix 24.4
SG 1.103
3:00pm
Ph 3.64
Acid 7.0
Pitching D254 yeast

[Cindy Scott]

My numbers using the MoreWine Guide to Red Winemaking process of blending sample in blender, straining and then putting thru coffee filter (which I did in the fridge overnight):

ph 3.94 TA 5.2 brix 1.100

Numbers using regular process of settling wine, putting in fridge, bringing to room temp:
ph 3.91 TA 5.6

I added 2g/l tartaric acid and am using D254 yeast. Cap is up and smells good.

First time doing fresh grapes in 14 years – usually we freeze and ferment in January. I forgot about fruit flies! the vacuum and apple cider vinegar traps have been busy.

Today’s ph was 3.53 and acid 7.8