Vintage full of fun--15th Feb 2007
Well, today was a so exicting day for me. I saw the bunch crushed and then pumped into the fermentor. I pull the crafe into the crush exit and saw the stem coming out. I forked the stem using a medium length fork. I walked around on the catwalk, and saw the different fermenters with some full of must and others not. The day became so brilliant. I really enjoyed this kind of study, and touched everything and learned everything.
Our Merlot was crushed, and the whole berry was pumped into the tank. We choose the open fermentation. I asked Christ how to control the temperature. He told me that this tank is computer controled and let me feel the cold outside of the tank and told me that there are a fridge system just outside of the tank. Now I can understand what is the cold jacket.
Cause Stralian grapes usually lack of acid, so do our Merlot. So, we added some tartaric acid into our must. There was 670kg of Merlot and mixed with 30kg of Shiraz. The pH of our must was 3.8, so we adjusted the pH to 3.4. Then 500g of tartaric acid was added into the must.
Before we took the sample, we sprayed some dry ice and plunged the must using the hydraulic plunger. Drive the plunger was really full of fun. Push the plunger into the tank and broke the cap and mix them in the whole tank. Then, we use a plastic container and took some sample from the side we could touch. While, the Brix was getting lower than the berry sample on the first day. It was 23.1 Brix, about 12.5 Baume; while it was 25 Brix at the first day. And the pH was too low to acceptable. Well, this awuful situation was not just happened on us. Steve told us using pumping over to mix the must again. Well, pumping over was really a hard job. When I mixed it, I found I really hated that stuff. It was so heavy that I could not lift it and mix it properly, especially for that suction one. But it worked pretty well. The pH was 3.53, Brix was 24.4, TA was 6.9 and free SO2 was 12.8. These results looked so beatiful and we were satisfied to get home.
Oh, yeah. For adding the SO2 to protect the must was done when crushing. It was added into the underneath case and about 50ppm.
And we applied cold soak first and hope tomorrow afternoon we will innoculate the yeast.
Emm, I must tell u guys about my must character. At 5pm, it had a lovely pink color and a so fresh mulberry nose. I love it so much.
Well, vintage is really full of fun! ^_^
ying 15th Feb 2007
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