Fall Wine Plans! A Storm is brewing....

[seth8530]

Thanks, I appreciate your interest. I am slightly concerned that I might have to scale back my plans for this fall due to financial constraints.. But hopefully the essence of this experiment will survive.

 

[Deezil]

Thought I would share this latest find:

3001

"Isolated, studied and selected from the prestigious Côte de Nuits terroir in Burgundy during a three-year research project by Laboratory Burgundia Oenologie in Beaune, France. The goal of this selection program was to find a dominant natural yeast strain from a traditional “cold soak” that would elaborate intense, complex and balanced Pinot Noir varietal character. The 3001 strain stood out from other strains. Wines made with it were noted for fruit and varietal characters that were both elegant and complex. This yeast has moderate nitrogen demands but will benefit from proper nutrition and aeration, these factors becoming increasingly important as your potential alcohol content rises above 13%. This strain is tolerant to standard SO2 additions and low temperatures (down to 12°C/54°F) for a steady and reliable alcoholic fermentation following cold soak. The 3001 yeast is specifically for high quality cold soak Pinot Noir destined for aging."

 

[seth8530]

Nice find Deezil, it sounds really promising considering I plan on doing a nice long cold soak prior to fermentation. Also, not sure if you know but I managed to snag a deep freezer for cheap and I plan on retrofitting it with a temperature controller so that I can keep temp exactly where I want it.. This yeast would make an interesting first test for Helga.....

 

[WI_Wino]

Nice find Deezil, it sounds really promising considering I plan on doing a nice long cold soak prior to fermentation. Also, not sure if you know but I managed to snag a deep freezer for cheap and I plan on retrofitting it with a temperature controller so that I can keep temp exactly where I want it.. This yeast would make an interesting first test for Helga.....

I would test with a cheap beer kit first than fresh grapes that you are (probably) going to be paying premium for. Nice thing about ales is it usually takes 1-3 weeks before you bottle.

 

[seth8530]

So, juicegrape just posted their availability for grapes. I am afraid I will be forced to use frozen must for the pinot noir ( has skins with it) and frozen juice for the chard because of how expensive it will be to ship fresh grapes all the way from cali. However, I still have options.

http://www.juicegrape.com/jg_sitespecific/docs/2013 Grape Product Offerings.pdf

From this list here, which region/grower do you think it most like to give me a very mineral intense pinot noir and a full bodied chard. I realize that much of this lies in the hands on the winemaker but of course the grapes do play in as well.

 

[seth8530]

Just ordered 12 gallons of Chard from the Lodi region. I should expect it in sometime towards the start of October. Pinot noir will be available around the end of October.

 

[seth8530]

wow, making grape wine it's expensive! I should have my pinotnoir off which I ordered 15 gallons of frozen must in by next Friday. my chardonnay s should be in the week after that of which I orderd 12 gallons of juice.

 

[seth8530]

So here is a question for those in the know. Cold-soaking is a process where in which one lets the must sit on the skins for a period of time before beggining fermentation in an attempt to bring out more flavors from the skins. What do yall think about cold soaking the Pinot? Is their any need to cold soak a frozen must? Would the natural thawing process take care of that?

 

[JohnT]

Seth,

My experience is that cold soaking happens after you press your white wines. You chill the must down to prevent fermentation and allow all pulp and overly tannic substances to settle out. Once the juice clarifies, you then rack, warm up, and then pitch.

I never had a need to cold soak re wine.

johnT.

 

[ShawnDTurner]

If the must is frozen, then you are cold soaked. Yes as you thaw you are cold soaked.

 

[seth8530]

Seth,

My experience is that cold soaking happens after you press your white wines. You chill the must down to prevent fermentation and allow all pulp and overly tannic substances to settle out. Once the juice clarifies, you then rack, warm up, and then pitch.

I never had a need to cold soak re wine.

johnT.

Thanks for the input, I might have to employ that the next time I press from a white grape.

If the must is frozen, then you are cold soaked. Yes as you thaw you are cold soaked.

Hmm, that was sort of what I was thinking. I have read about pinot makers giving their must a week long cold soak... Perhaps I could slowly unthaw this stuff in my freezer and leave it at around 40 degrees for a week and a half or something to get really good pre fermentation extraction since I will not be do a super hot ferment.

 

[seth8530]

Alright, so the goods should be coming in by this Friday! I am rather excited!

 

[ShawnDTurner]

Remember. Pinot makers are using fresh grapes. You are using grapes that have been frozen for weeks and months. So you are cold soaked enough let your grapes un thaw. May take a few days to come to the right temp to pitch yeast and then pitch.

 

[seth8530]

Thankfully I know that the grapes are not months old. Maybe a couple weeks at most which is good. So this means that the grapes were first crushed and then frozen. Depending on how long that took say a day at most. This gives me around 1 day of cold soak. Then the thawing process say a day and a half if I remove the insulation.

This only gives me around 2.5 days of cold soak so from what I have heard that is a short soak compared to the typical 4-10 day long soak. What I am thinking about doing is gently (or aggressively... not sure yet) thawing the pinot noir and then putting it into my temperature controlled freezer at say 41 degrees to ward of infection for around a week. Making sure to stir it up routinely to keep the cap wet and insure a good soak.

So, what do you think? From what I understand not much cold soaking goodness is going on while both the grapes and juice are frozen compared to when they are a solid liquid mixture.

I wonder if it is safe to assume if the grapes are already sulfited.... I do not have SO2 testing ability /: and I certainly do not want to over sulfite the grapes while I wait for them to soak.

BTW thanks for the input I am just trying to bounce some ideas around right now is all.

 

[seth8530]

So, good things are now here! Much earlier than the Friday start date that I expected. Right now I have all of my Pinot noir thawing as well as one of the chards. I am having to be a little bit clever to work around my limit temperature controlled fermentation space...

So here is what is going to go down.

I am going to cold soak all of the pinot noir at 45 degrees F for a week. While that is happening I will have the room temperature Chard fermented as per the prior listed procedure.

Then, once the the pinot noir has finished cold soaking I will take take the chard out of my roommates fridge and put that in the fermentation chamber with the pinot noir and ferment both the cold half of the pinot noir and the cold half of the chard at 60 F ( 59F is the lower limit of D47).


Simultaneously, I will have the warm half of the pinot noir ferment at room tempature. At this time I assume that the warm chard will have already fermented to near completion. So all in all I am going to have 4 different fermentation schedules to keep up with so I am going to have make out a spread sheet that way I can keep straight when to add what to each batch.


I will of course have to verify the TA given by Iron Oak Vineyards after the cold soak is complete but 5.85 g/l seems kind of low.. Do yall have any recommendations for acid level for a pinot noir?

 

[Deezil]

No idea on the acidity of the Pinot Noir myself..

Just wanted to chime in, and wish ya good luck monitoring 4 ferments at once..

 

[ShawnDTurner]

Ph Between 3.40 and 3.50. Remember pinot is a low Tannin grape. When you have low tannins you need to have acidity for balance and structure. I shoot for 3.4 for my Pinots and a ta .65 to .8. Cheers

 

[seth8530]

No idea on the acidity of the Pinot Noir myself..

Just wanted to chime in, and wish ya good luck monitoring 4 ferments at once..

Thanks for chiming in, this should be a good learning experience.. Spread sheet has been made.. Hopefully it will help

Ph Between 3.40 and 3.50. Remember pinot is a low Tannin grape. When you have low tannins you need to have acidity for balance and structure. I shoot for 3.4 for my Pinots and a ta .65 to .8. Cheers

Thanks for the advice shawn. Based on what you are saying I will try and bump acidity on the pinot up to .7 once cold maceration is complete.


So, wow.. that was a lot of work. I put volume markers on my 20 gal buckets in 3 L increments, cleaned them out really well and put 15 gallons of pinot noir must into one of the buckets in the freezer.

I think that their is some wild fermentation going on in the pinot noir so I applied Kmeta and lowered the temperature down to 41 degrees... Lets see how much them yeasties like that...

I also have 6 gals of the chard sitting out getting warmed up and well mixed. I added some meta to him I will take a gravity reading of him in the morning and possibly take the TA as well if I have time. If the TA seems good I will go and inoculate it with D47.

 

[seth8530]

I am rather unimpressed with my chard juice. SG was 1.080 with TA sitting .475. I added 8 tsp with the hope to get the acid up to .7 something. I will re test it later today. I am going to have to bump up the sugar when I get back from class today and get this guy fermenting..

Also, the pinot noir is developing the brownish colour around the skins. I believe this is from the enzyme I am using breaking them down because when I bring skins and stuff up from the bottom I get the nice reddish colour back.

 

[ShawnDTurner]

This spring with my Chilean pinot I did a wild, ambient, natural fermentation. Whatever it is being called today.

No problems with fermentations. The Must smelled fantastic. It is currently going through mlf. Should be done by the end of November. It is close according chrono paper test.

I will only do wild fermentations with pinot. Cheers