Finer Wine Kit FWK FrankenWine!

[Garagista]

Protect your small children - keep them away from FrankenWine!
A couple of nights ago, I took a 20 pounds of Petite Syrah grape skins and seeds from this year's ferment and threw them into a brute with 2 FWK concentrate bags. The goal was to do a second run with the skins using the FWK as a base.
I mixed the 2 bags to make 12 gallons per the instructions. Instead of the yeast, I threw in the leftover Petite Syrah pomace. I didn’t even check the Brix before I went to bed. In the morning, the Brix was 17! This morning it was 6. I expect it is dry now.
I cannot begin to fathom how 12 gallons of FWK can go dry in less than 48 hours. Has anyone ever seen this?

 

[winemaker81]

I did the same thing 2 years ago, adding pomace from Grenache and Tempranillo to two different FWK Tavola Merlot kits. My detailed blog is here:

https://wine.bkfazekas.com/2022-fwk-kit-grape-pomace-in-detail/

As noted in the blog, the pomace contains wine with an SG <= 1.000, so that low SG liquid dilutes the unfermented kit juice, immediately lowering the overall brix.

As for the rapid fermentation, the ferment is not starting out with the colony from a 5 g packet of yeast -- it's got ALL the yeast remaining in a lot of pomace. That's a lot of yeast that is hungry!

Last fall we used 2 juice buckets instead of kits. Following is a my regular notes -- I didn't see anything special enough to do an "In Detail" blog:

https://wine.bkfazekas.com/2023-sangiovese/

This really illustrates how much wine may be left in the pomace. Last fall we pressed the CS, CF, and Merlot hard enough (using a basket press) to get 18 or 19 gallons each of CS and CF. The goal was to fill the barrels (55 liter) with more than enough topup for the year.

I took SG readings on the buckets, divided the pomace between two 32 gallon Brutes, and poured a bucket into each. The goal here was to have enough wine left in the pomace from 20 lugs to net at least 4 gallons of wine, so we'd have enough to fill our third barrel.

When we pressed the wine a week later, we netted just short of 24 gallons! We left a lot more in the pomace than we realized, grossing nearly 12 gallons!

When you press -- look at the total amount of liquid, subtract 12 gallons from that, and that is how much raw wine was left in the pomace.

 

[Garagista]

Wow, thanks. There is a lot to unpack there! I’ve got a lot of homework.