Other Extended Maceration Eclipse Lodi 11 Cab

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One benefit though is that I decided to really look at the skins in the skin pack. They are pretty well chopped up which I assume is done to enchance maximum extraction during a normal primary. I'm not sure 9 weeks extended time is needed with them so well chopped, but I will do about six to seven and see what they look like then.

I think I remember Tim V. in another video explaining that the new WE skin packs were somehow processed to release the "soft" tannins only, which would allow the wines to be ready a bit earlier. They do look half digested IMHO. Mmmm, grape vomit! Takes me back to when the kids were toddlers.
 
72 hours: I think the end of the major foaming is over, fingers crossed. The must is at 79 inside it's insulation. I just put it under air lock and it is firing like a piston. I'll still be punching down and stirring at least twice a day so the yeast will still get their oxygen. But with so many grape skins clinging to the sides I don't want them to start reacting to an oxygen rich environment.
 
All is well. Now we stir and wait a few weeks. Btw, I studied the photos in Tim's blog and figured out how he avoided the foaming problem. He filled his fermenter to just a little over 5 gallons, according to the gallon marks visible in the pics. With the skin bag it's just over 5 1/2 gallons total.
 
Day 6: all is well

Major foaming ended early yesterday. The must temp is 74. The skins are no longer riding on CO2 bubbles. Now they are mixing well with the wine. My plan is to keep the lid on and under airlock. For the next two weeks I will slosh the bottle to move wine over the skins. I want to do this to ensure that it stays under a CO2 cap.

At the three week mark I plan to add the kmeta and oak cubes. Then I will put a solid lid on and keep it for another three weeks. Again my goal now is to minimize oxygen contact while keeping the skins in contact.

I welcome other thoughts and advice.

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Ted,

Based on your guidance, I started this process on Sunday with the same Winexpert Lodi cab kit. I am fermenting in a bucket and then transferring to the big mouth with the skins this weekend. Pantry I ferment in is warm and I am worried about it overwhelming the big mouth and making a mess, as I have to travel a couple of days this week and the wife is stirring for me. I don't want a thirty minute conversation on how hard the two minute cleanup was so not taking the chance. Keep us posted on your progression and thanks for being the guinea pig! The local brew supply house did not sell the gaskets either so I think that is a mfg. issue.
 
Ted,

Based on your guidance, I started this process on Sunday with the same Winexpert Lodi cab kit. I am fermenting in a bucket and then transferring to the big mouth with the skins this weekend. Pantry I ferment in is warm and I am worried about it overwhelming the big mouth and making a mess, as I have to travel a couple of days this week and the wife is stirring for me. I don't want a thirty minute conversation on how hard the two minute cleanup was so not taking the chance. Keep us posted on your progression and thanks for being the guinea pig! The local brew supply house did not sell the gaskets either so I think that is a mfg. issue.

Hi, thanks for the kind words, I'm glad I'm helping. Best of luck on your experiment too. Good idea on starting the ferment in the bucket, that will avoid the over foaming issue and avoid issues with the wife. On mine, the major foaming was over by day 5, but even then a good stir created a good head. So be careful when you transfer. I noticed the foam is more manageable without a lid on the bottle. It seems as though once it hits fresh air it largely stops expanding, but even then be gentle on the transfer and stirring.

I sent an email to the maker of the FerMonster and got a reply. They purposefully offer lids without the O ring, and sell the O ring separately. Morewinemaking has the O ring, but Labelpeelers doesn't. They don't seem to know that they have to buy it separately. So I ordered the O ring from Morewinemaking and rather than pay $8 shipping for a $2 O ring, I also got three cases of bottles and paid $10 total shipping. Weird math, but that's what it was. The FerMonster is apparently a pretty new product and folks selling them aren't fully familiar with them.

Keep us posted. BTW, I really enjoyed watching the foam rise through the skins, and now enjoy being able to see the skins through the crystal clear PET FerMonster. Even better than bubble watching :)
 
Day 9: things are just setting around.

The skins are mostly all in contact with the wine now. No more foam, some gas when I slosh daily.

Here is a new picture of the skins. I don't know how well it will show up but now the skins are losing quite a bit of their color. Under a flashlight they are mostly pink. Hard to say how much color they've given up but compared to my last pick of the skins these are much lighter and some are getting almost transparent. I will pull some out again next week and see where they are then for an ongoing comparison. Given how finely chopped these are I'm not sure these need Tim's 9 weeks to give up all they have. I'm going to shoot for six but will play it by ear. I imagine that skin and seed tannin extraction isn't necessarily tied to color extraction.

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Here is a new picture of the skins. I don't know how well it will show up but now the skins are losing quite a bit of their color. Under a flashlight they are mostly pink. Hard to say how much color they've given up but compared to my last pick of the skins these are much lighter and some are getting almost transparent.

I remember commenting that the skins in my Dornfelder batch last Fall started to look like little grey toupees, and they are one dark grape (I think @GreenEnvy22 has an image of his Dornfelder cap this Fall in one of his threads).
 
Nothing new today, but I wanted to show you the droppings. A fine layer at the bottom, a large fluffy layer, and then skins as they fall.

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Day 17.

SG is down to 1.00. Almost no CO2 activity and very little foam when shaken or stirred. Probably due to room temp of 68 causing CO2 to bind stronger with the wine. Given that I have another four weeks with a huge headspace I'm thinking that that will be beneficial to preventing oxidation.

Today I added in the kit's 90g of Hungarian oak cubes, stirred gently and then gave it a couple sprays of kmeta from my sanitizer bottle before putting the lid with airlock back on. I don't intend to stir up the considerable sediment any more. Most of the grape skins have fallen down, so the top of the wine has a few skins and the off-white shells of the currants I added. The skin pack skins are the same color as last time so they may still have more to give.

I also tried an ounce or so of it. This is where my erudite mastery of vinification and prose comes in: It tastes good. Okay, lets see if I can do better. First it has a wonderful nose of fruits. My wife who is better at this than me describes it as blackberry. I can't be so specific, but it has a definite sweet fruit smell which I don't recall on my other batches. The first thing I notice in taste is the tannin. Not objectionable at all, and in a finished wine just a hair stronger than the way I like it, but not bad by any means. This tannin is possibly from the sacrificial oak dust added at the beginning, but hopefully more from the skins being on this long. There is some gas, but I didn't notice the bite I usually get with CO2, but this was a small sip. The wine ends with pleasant faint blackberries in the finish.

So far so good. The plan now is to leave it alone for another two weeks, taste again, and if all is well then finish off another two weeks and call this done.

Any suggestions or thoughts?

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Day 28: Almost all of the skins have fallen and are now part of the 3" of 'stuff' on the bottom of the carboy. While I assume that some wine and alcohol is still interacting with them, I'm not so sure how much benefit the wine is still getting from them mixed up in the lees. Top layer of the lees is extremely fine and any movement of the carboy raises a cloud of it. I had thought of tasting and then adding the Kmeta now, but I really don't want to stir it again and further bury the skins. So I'm going to leave the top on with the airlock in place and hope for the best. Two more weeks and then I'll rack and add Kmeta.

I'm thinking that if I had put the skins in in the bag, then there would be a greater chance the bulk of the skins would be sitting on top of the lees with better exposure to the wine. May not make a difference, but something to think about. On the other hand, if I had included the bag that would have taken up more space leaving even less headspace for the foam during fermentation. It's clear to me why Tim V only added water to his kit to a little less than 5.5 gallons. I am curious though, if the skins were in the bag, and the bag floats on the CO2 during fermentation, would the bag have acted like a stopper at the neck of the carboy but perhaps have been permeable enough to let the gas escape but hold the foam down? Or would it have just rode the gas out of the carboy? If anyone tries that approach please let me know what happens.
 
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I read all six pages. I just today racked this kit into secondary. Two things...your yard stick measurement of lees seems about what i had except I bagged the skins and oak...layer was deep but loose. I transferred it to a gallon jug which is cold crashing in the fridge, 4" of lees, but I'm going to savage some more wine!

Second....I have currants...fighting the urge to add some to the secondary now! I like Joe's tweaks...I was also trying to run this kit straight though. Ahhhhhhh...
 
Day 43:

Two weeks since I last checked it. I have not yet sulfited it yet, relying (read that hoping) on the CO2 to preserve it if I left it undisturbed. But today is taste and decision day for the next step. I apologize once again for being palate and wine language deprived and not likely giving you a thorough and proper description of what I tasted. But have faith @ceeaton and I plan to meet mid next month where I will give him half a bottle and he can give us his thoughts. I've seen his descriptions, they're pretty good.

But for now, here are mine.

Nose: best nose on a kit wine of mine yet. I've had 6-9 month old Eclipse kits that didn't have any nose, but this one definitely does. Weird though, not wine, fruit or floral to me. More like a note of coffee, my wife described it as nutty. Hopefully not oxidation nutty, just nutty but I don't taste that. Remember though that the oak cubes have been in for four weeks at this point, so there is plenty of oak in it. we both find it to be a pleasant smell. It's also been in my fermentation closet at 73 degrees for three weeks so that certainly could have helped with the nose opening up.

CO2: yep, plenty of it. Not obnoxious tasting but there, and I'm pleased for it as I believe it may continue to perotect the wine a bit longer.

Taste: we are not picking up the blackberry taste we did last time. Like the smell, there is no specific smell of fruit or florals. There is just a very pleasant, more mature, Cabernet taste, again with a hint of coffee. The tannins I noticed last time are much more muted now and pleasant which surprises me with the oak that's in it now. Maybe 6 weeks is the magical time when we've turned the corner and extended maceration has done its job and brought the tannin curve back down. It is very very pleasant and more mature than its age would suggest.

Clarity: the wine is not clear and other than settling no attempt has been made to clear it. Nonetheless, it looks very good. For this batch I may just jump on the bandwagon and skip the chitosan and see what happens.

Mouthfeel and body: both good. It could be because I haven't cleared it yet, but both mouthfeel and body are full and pleasant like a hardy red.

Legs: this wine has legs. I haven't taken a final SG reading yet, so I don't have the calculated ABV, but the legs on this one are better than my other Eclipse Cabs. The clear layer on the glass that forms the legs is almost viscous, many legs with many branches. I thought legs were a functional of alcohol, but perhaps there's more to them.

Overall Verdict: I've made 7 or 8 Eclipse Lodi Cab kits, and this is the best so far, even comparing others out to say 6 months. Quite impressive considering that it's still in diapers. There are of course variables other than extended maceration in play here. For one thing the oak cubes have been in for four weeks, when by instructions they generally get less than two weeks. The other major change was the addition of currants which I've not done before. I see no ill effects from doing a kit this way, and a whole lot of positives. Time will tell about oxidation though.

Next step: I don't know if there is any benefit to continuing extended maceration. From my research the purpose of extended maceration was to extract all the goodness from the skins and this would likely occur after the initial spike in tannins and then with more time on the skins the taming of those tannins. I believe that we have accomplished that. I won't have the time to rack till Sunday so I believe that's when I will rack it, degas it and add kmeta. Then it can sit for four months till it goes in the barrel.

Thoughts?
 
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This is a really cool and interesting thread - Going to have to try this of course but will need a large mouth carboy thing. Wish there was a better way to use a standard carboy - I wonder out loud whether using a blender or similar on the skins would allow a small mouth carboy?

Is there a specific reason or theory to not sulfite once AF is complete?

Cheers and best luck hope it turns out great!
-johann
 
This is a really cool and interesting thread - Going to have to try this of course but will need a large mouth carboy thing. Wish there was a better way to use a standard carboy - I wonder out loud whether using a blender or similar on the skins would allow a small mouth carboy?

Is there a specific reason or theory to not sulfite once AF is complete?

Cheers and best luck hope it turns out great!
-johann

Johann,
It was just a judgement call on my part. Two things, plenty of CO2 in the wine which in previous stirrings had nearly overflowed the fermonster. Second, I looked at all the lees on the bottom and didn't want to stir them back into the wine. I've read that battonage of red doesn't work well, and that's the image I had in my head if I had stirred in the kmeta. The future may let me know that I chose poorly, but I know that CO2 doesn't leave room for oxygen to bind. Hopefully it was a good call, but maybe stirring in earlier would not have caused a problem in taste or overflow.
 
Johann,
It was just a judgement call on my part. Two things, plenty of CO2 in the wine which in previous stirrings had nearly overflowed the fermonster. Second, I looked at all the lees on the bottom and didn't want to stir them back into the wine. I've read that battonage of red doesn't work well, and that's the image I had in my head if I had stirred in the kmeta. The future may let me know that I chose poorly, but I know that CO2 doesn't leave room for oxygen to bind. Hopefully it was a good call, but maybe stirring in earlier would not have caused a problem in taste or overflow.

The thing that would not make me worry too much is that fact that there were a few here who kept trying to do MLF on a Spring batch, and kept trying, and again, and again...and never added SO2 until just recently. So I think there is plenty of leeway to not oxidize a batch. Who knows, maybe those skins keep it from happening as quickly than if they weren't in there, which they weren't in those who had issues from last Spring.

Interesting thing would be to find someone who has a batch within a few months of your current one so we could try the wines side by side. As an aside, I did that with my two Pinot Grigio buckets from this Spring. Mixed 1/2 of each bucket with the other, then did everything the same except for yeast. The first batch that I have bottled is getting negative reviews. So I cooled a bottle from the first down, tried it (when I was using it for a beef stroganoff tonight), then cooled down a sample of the second (was in a carboy still) and tried that. Two totally different wines at this point, and the second one in the carboy is way better than the bottled one. Go figure...

Maybe in the future when I try this experiment, you or @jgmann67 or @Boatboy24 could get the same batch going w/o the extended maceration, then we could all meet and try the wines to compare the two methods.
 
Day 46: Racking day.

I've done 46 days in fermentation and sitting. The final SG was .998, just .002 less than day 17. My initial SG was 1.096, making the ABV about 13.3%.

I racked to a carboy using the AllinOne. Racking went well, I only had to clear the racking cane's tip twice. However, I left a bit over a liter of fluid in the fermonster. It was so mixed with the funk on the bottom that I couldn't get it out with the cane, and since it was essentially thin mud I decided not to try to put it into a separate gallon jug and see what separated. If I had used a bag I would have been fine squeezing as much juice out as I could, but not this embedded with yeast and stuff.

For those interested in seeing what is left after six and a half weeks I'm including a picture. It contains the contents of the grape pack, the added currants, the initial oak chips and the final oak cubes. To me it looks like a piranha has done a pretty good job getting the most out of it.

Since this sat in my ferment closet at 74 degrees for the last three weeks I expected an easy degassing. At first I used the wine whip on an electric corded drill as usual. I beat it hard for 20 seconds then reversed for another 20 and stopped to see if the volcano was coming. Nothing. Not even a bit of the usual bubbles that usually run up the sides. I whipped this back and forth for about five minutes and got very little foam. By this time I usually have bubbles running up the sides like a vertical river, but I only had a surface layer of bubbles, not even covering the whole surface. I let it sit while I mixed the kmeta and came back to about a half inch of foam. I whipped two more minutes and nothing. Maybe it degassed on its own in the warm room? To be sure I connected my vacuum pump. Now the bubbles released. I spent another 12-15 minutes under vacuum until the bubbles turned large. I'm not sure why whipping didn't realease the gas, but I'm confident I got enough out and sitting in a carboy and barrel for another 8 months it will be fine.

That's about it for this thread. Hopefully Craig will give us a good escription next month and I will update over the months as it ages.

About my only change for next time would be to try it with the chips and grape pack in the mesh bag and see what that does during the ferment.

Ted

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