Couldn’t be any happier. 100% Head and shoulders better than fall grapes...again.
Ouch!! You don’t have that much, consider bucking up and separating the good from bad before crushing. Your end product will thank you. Definitely think about co-inoculating mlb, you could have lots of bound sulfite, the critters will get a better foothold before you produce alcohol.
Looks good, I must have gotten the 4 runt lugs of malbec. But the carmenere grapes are very nice. Maybe it was the contrast.
Right!! I was picky during crush. Pulled out more, raisin-ed and under-ripe and leaves and twigs and etc, than any other lugs to date, but in reality it didn't add up much weight wise.
This past year I started adding MLB the day after yeast with good results. I crushed 7 lugs of carmenere yesterday, will add yeast tonight and MLB tomorrow. Good luck
Inoculate ml in the grapes. Even 24 HRs later is cool. And after when added to the juice those yeasts and ml bacteria are already so active that they will both kick off together no problem. Will take off fast and finish fast. Doing the same thing myself.
Thanks, John, Ajmassa, and Pgentile! I'll go with the MLF on the grapes!
The only con to co-innoculatation of MLB is if you planned to add the used grape skins to a kit in the future. I think most suggest not to perform MLF on kits, and adding grapes that went through MLF would most likely introduce MLB to the kit juice.
Not 100% sure I understand your question. When I add skins from press to buckets I don't add any yeast, there's more than enough to handle the bucket. I usually do 3 buckets and don't add yeast. But I do add nutrients at the proper steps.
That was my question and I researched and found that additional yeast is not needed as you said. As far as proper steps would it be an immediate nutrient addition and then again at 1/3?
There is that - And I remember now that's why I didn't co-inoculate last year and I ended up running a stags leap merlot kit through the left over skins and mlb'ing the cab after pressing.
Yup, that's what I do.
No evidence, no proof and no experience but this is my take on the whole MLF/kits debate. Kit instructions and recommendations are for the beginning winemaker. Even though experienced winemakers use kits I doubt they follow the directions. This is obvious with the responses the experienced give to the beginners. I get the balanced thing and from what I gather on this site, kits are high in Malic additions. Artificially produced Malic will not convert to lactic. Then there is not knowing how the juice is processed which could be an issue. As you said Johann if it where to be able to go through MLF adjustments would have to be made which would be an added step which most people couldn't or wouldn't want to do.
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