Mosti Mondiale It's On The Way !!

[Wade E]

Have you gotten the barrel from leaking yet?

 

[GrantLee63]

Not yet. I'm tryinga somewhat different approach first.... I placed the barrel (still filled with water) on end, with the end that has the leak facing up. I have filled-up that end with boiling water just like I did when I first got it per Sandor's instructions. Every hour or so I'm going to replace that water with fresh boiling water. I'll do that a dozen times or so throughout the course of the day and see what happens. If it still leaks, I'll try the bathtub thing.
With that being said, I'm not planning on putting this Amarone in the barrel - I'm going to use the oak that came with this kit, and if I were to do that, I would have had to make a double batch as my barrel will almost hold a full 12 gallons, and as you know,one needs to keep their barrel full when barrel aging. That would have been an expensive proposition !!!


- GL63

 

[PatL]

I just bottled the MM All Juice Pinot Noir this afternoon. I degassed it with an electric vacuum pump and filtered also. No gas and it is very clear.

I drank almost a bottle in the process. It is very fruity and tasty, I don't know how long I can let it age.

I need to leave it until our wine guild tasting Jan 2010. I have no will power.

I also racked a MM All juice masters Amarone today.

 

[Wade E]

Grant, I hope you can get this barrel thing fixed. the size of this barrel is what i would not get unless I was making wine from grapes. I would have bought the 22 liter barrel myself if planned on doing kits in it.

 

[GrantLee63]

Thanks Wade .... I'm sure it will be fine. What I'm finding out is that slight leaks are farily common in barrels - guess that's one of the reasons people don't want to mess with them! The reason I chose this size is because I have plans on making wine from grapes starting this fall, and I'm only 'breaking-in' the barrel with kit wines.


- GL63


PS - The Amarone is right on schedule with a very robust fermention and is filling the room with a divine aroma !!!

 

[Swede]

I wasn't sure as well on the conflicting instructions, but I'm assuming the instructions on the extra piece of paper regarding the raisins overrides the base instructions in the kit. However I did wait nearly 24 hours after starting the yeast before I added the raisins.


I too am going to wait until 1.020 before the first rack according to the other instructions instead of at 1.040ish.


Is this what everyone else is doing?

 

[Swede]

By the way mine also took off very fast and was quite strong in just 24 hours.

 

[unaFORDable]

GL63 please post your SG readings when you rack from primary to secondary.
I couldn't wait so I went ahead and started my Amarone yesterday. Fermentation is strong!! I didn't have any conflicting directions about the raisins, mine said to add in 24 hours. So I've just now done that today.


Question: Reading these directions, it looks like I'm racking everything (except raisins) at SG 1.040. Do you think it's alright to also keep the raisins?? Or how about like someone else said, to rack at 1.020? Is that to keep the raisins in the wine just a little longer??
TinaLouise

 

[Swede]

I started my Amerone on Saturday morning, (Starting SG was 1.094 72deg)added raisins on Sunday morning. Today is Monday and I'm already down to 1.056. This is a very active ferment and it's whizzing, popping, and bubbling away. I may be getting close to my target tomorrow night so I'll have to check it again when I get home from work. I may start my second Ameroneright behind it which will put it just about Saturday for it's target.

 

[GrantLee63]

GL63 please post your SG readings when you rack from primary to secondary.
I couldn't wait so I went ahead and started my Amarone yesterday. Fermentation is strong!! I didn't have any conflicting directions about the raisins, mine said to add in 24 hours. So I've just now done that today.


Question: Reading these directions, it looks like I'm racking everything (except raisins) at SG 1.040. Do you think it's alright to also keep the raisins?? Or how about like someone else said, to rack at 1.020? Is that to keep the raisins in the wine just a little longer??
TinaLouise

TinaLouise,


I'm going by the seperate sheet that was included with my Meglioli kit - it says to 1) Add the raisins after pitching the yeast (which I did) and 2) rack off the raisins when the SG gets down to 1.020 (which I will).


The current SG of my must is 1.035 so I will be racking tomorrow when I get home from work. I will take the raisins (which are now grapes) and run them through my little fruit press which I've had for a few years. It has a stainless steel basket with a strainer assembly, so I will squeeze every little drop from those suckers and then add that to the carboy.


I'll continue to update this thread so stay tuned.


- GL63

 

[GrantLee63]

Have you gotten the barrel from leaking yet?

Not yet ..... It's sitting in my bathtub now filled with hot water and completely submerged in hot water. I will leave it in for 24 hours, drain it, refill it with hot water and keep an eye on it. Hopefully this will do the trick. If not, I'll call Sandor ....


- GL63

 

[Wade E]

Fingers are crossed!

 

[GrantLee63]

Fingers are crossed!

Looks like your crossed fingers worked Wade as there is no indication of any external leakage at this point (the barrel has been out of the tub for about 1 1/2 hours now and the surface is starting to dry) - hopefully this issue has been resolved. I'll continue to monitor throughout the course of the week, and make the mead I am going to make - and ferment in it - this weekend.


TinaLouise:


SG = 1.015 (man .... EC-1118 reallychews through the sugar !!!)
<UL>
<LI>Skimmed all the raisins / grapes from the surface. Squeezed the living $*&amp;% out of them with my nifty little Italian-made miniature press. Added all the squeezed juice back into the 10 gallon fermenter.
<LI>Dissolved the yeast nutrient in 2 ounces of cold water per the instructions and added it to the must.
<LI>Stirred per instructions to suspend all the yeast.
<LI>Added both packs of oak to my clean and sanitized 6 1/2 gallon carboy
<LI>Racked from the 10 gallon fermenter to the 6 1/2 gallon carboy and airlocked</LI>[/list]
All looks - and continues to smell - great !!!


- GL63

 

[Wade E]

You are going to ferment in it? O kow you can bu thought most just age in there.

 

[GrantLee63]

You are going to ferment in it? O kow you can bu thought most just age in there.

Eventually this barrel will be used for long-term (1-2 years) aging, but as you know,there is aLOT ofoakiness in new barrels so Ihave to plan a bit before I can actually do that. My plan is to assemble a batch of a chard-style mead and actually barrel-ferment this one - I plan on doing this Saturday, January 31.


After that batch has had sufficient contact with the woodand has attained the oak level I want, I will be putting inthe double batch of a CC OVZ that I made on January 17, as it will be clear and stabilized at that point. I'm estimating that one will be in the barrel for 8-10 weeks. At some point while that is going on, I will have to decide which red kit I will want to make a double batch of and repeat the above process, but keep this one in 14-16 weeks. Basically, I will be following the advice of BZAC at winepress.com:


"1st use 1-4 weeks ( you might also consider barrel fermenting a chardonnay in it for the first use)
2nd use 3-8 weeks
3rd use 2-4 months
4th use 4-6 months
5th 6 months to a year"


Anyway, my plan is to always have a red wine aging in this barrel - even after it becomes neutral, at which point I will use oak cubes in the barrel.


- GL63


PS - Keep in mind that a lot of 'oakiness' has been leached out of this barrel because of what I had to put it through in order to get it to stop leaking, so the above times will probably be lenghtened by at least a week or two (at least that's what I'm estimating).

 

[Wade E]

Very cool.

 

[unaFORDable]

Fingers are crossed!

SG = 1.015 (man .... EC-1118 reallychews through the sugar !!!)
<UL>
<LI>Skimmed all the raisins / grapes from the surface. Squeezed the living $*&amp;% out of them with my nifty little Italian-made miniature press. Added all the squeezed juice back into the 10 gallon fermenter.</LI>[/list]

Tomorrow I'm skimming my "grapes" off the top. Looks like that wont be to difficult to do. I don't have a "nifty little Italian-made miniature press" so what's the next best way to squeeze the daylites out of these buggers??
TinaLouise

 

[Swede]

I had my raisins in a coarse strainer bag in my batch, and just squeezed them and wringed them in the strainer bag. That seemed to work pretty good and there was mostly just pulp left over. Although I'm pretty strong and have a solid grip. Those strainer bags are amazingly tough.

 

[GrantLee63]

I think Swede's idea will work out great ....


- GL63

 

[unaFORDable]

After posting here yesterday I got to thinking about you saying the yeast was really chewing through the sugar and dropping the SG (or is it considered raising it???) So I went and checked mine
SG 1.010, I just about fainted then went to find something to scoop those grapes off the top and go ahead with the racking right away!! I didn't have any bag or cheese cloth so I just put the grapes into a blender and chopped them up a little bit then used my hands to squeeze the daylites out of them. I got just over a cup of juice from them so I thought I did pretty good. Actually my hands were tired and that was all the squeezing they were gonna put up with. Hopefully that was enough. That's it for my saga, can't wait to read your next installment of How the Amarone Does !!
TinaLouise