Recent content by AKsarben

when you used 2.5 oz how much wine was that for?

The time for using Cu++ is at the end of fermentation after the first rack. Ferment. Rack + 30ppm SO2. 2 weeks, rack again add Cu++ (copper sulfate at 0.2ppm white or up to 0.4ppm red). rack again in 2 weeks no SO2 then. rack again in 3-4 weeks, add SO2 again. Months later is not the time...

What oak beans from Stavin did you get? There is Hungarian, light, medium, heavy toast; French lt, med., heavy. and American oak, same thing. Then there is American un-charred, which is just natural splinters, pieces and small chunks of natural white oak. They are all different and will...

Yea, I know. However our Velcorin dosing machine costs a bit more, and the Vercorin we use at up to 200 ppm costs $407.50 for a 3 kg bottle that has to be special handled freight. And, yes, you have to be certified to handle this stuff as it is quite toxic. It allows the bottling of sweet wines...

This is not Fenn Valley Vineyards. We do not sterile filter dry reds at bottling. We adjust to at least molecular 0.8 at the bottling time,but nothing as tight as sterile filters. - Vern

Wasn't me, it was Skeenatron.

Correct! we filter our dry red wines to 2-5 microns before bottling, not sterile 0.45 Mic. for sterile filter, unless it has, or we have added, sugar. We also use DMDC, aka Velcorin to kill all yeasts and most bacteria during the bottling phase. In 24 hrs it breaks down to alcohol and CO2 and...

Total SO2 is both Free and bound SO2. When you added 200 ppm to aciduated water, you smell a strong SO2 odor from the Free SO2 that is quickly released. That 350 ppm Total SO2 is a legal threshold. It would be very unusual IE out of the ordinary, to add that much SO2 at one time. With our...

Remember, though, if you adjust the acid up a bit it will make the pH drop some and if you add SO2 before the pH shift you may be a bit high until the SO2 settles down. You will lose some for a while until it stabilizes.

We never add Potassium carbonate before fermentation, and only on some rare occasions after. We have used calcium carbonate to completely neutralize only a small portion of a high acid juice, which is done in separate tank. Rack off the juice that has basically no acid and pump back into the...

We bump the wine acid up on occasions, but use tartaric acid and figure 15% will fall out as cream of tartar. Other acids, no. Our apple ciders are always low acid and high pH, so we generally bump up the acid from .300 eg to .600 by adding 0.3% Malic acid, and that does not loose any of...

MLF will lower the acid by converting malic to lactic. Total SO2 is very important (low to get it going well) Sour indicates acetobacter (vinegar)infection..

No. The amount of yeast has nothing to do with how "dry" a wine will become. Yeast grows in the juice and during fermentation multiplying a thousand fold. How well the fermentation goes and how it is able to convert all the sugar to CO2 and alcohol is all that is needed to know. Too much...

We have around 230 acres of different varieties. Then we have contract growers. So hoping the spring is cold until the frost danger is past. Last year we fermented around 200,000 gallons of wine, and about 350,000 gallons of apple cider, for outside clients and us. Today, we centrifuged the...

It's not bleaching, actually, but more shift in pH. If the wine was a pH of 3.50 when you started and went through a good ML fermentation it will increase the pH to a higher level and give the wine a more "salty" taste. It softens it by converting the Malic (sharper) acid to Lactic (softer)...