This evening I checked the chemistry of the strawberry guava must (~5 liters).
SG = 1.077
pH = 3.38
TA = 7.5
I added 1.5 pounds of sugar to bring the specific gravity up to about 1.088, which will give me about 12.5% alcohol in the finished wine.
For next time, I noted that the titratable acidity is too [...]
Last Friday I went down to Aptos to pick fruit for winemaking. I’d advertised for free fruit on Freecycle, and a master gardener and member of the California Rare Fruit Growers responded with an offer of persimmons, pineapple guavas, and strawberry guavas.
Tonight I began making an experimental one-gallon batch of strawberry guava wine, based [...]
The pH of the Syrah is still high, so I added another 1/2 gm/L of tartaric acid. It will precipitate out during the winter when it gets really cold in the garage, a process called “cold stabilization.”
Today I racked the Shiraz into a new carboy to “polish” it.
Harvest Day +36, 6:30 PM: Racking the Shiraz
Today I “splash-racked” the Syrah; that is, I poured it out of the carboy into a plastic pail and then back into the carboy with much splashing, something one normally avoids doing. But it was generating hydrogen sulfide, perhaps from yeast autolysis in the lees, which are needed for the malolactic fermentation, and this will [...]
Today I stabilized and fined the Shiraz with the addition of potassium metabisulfite (sanitizer), potassium sorbate (preservative), and chitosan (a shellfish-based fining agent that will filter out particles that would otherwise make the wine cloudy). It will sit now for 8 days before I check to see if it’s ready for racking.
I stirred up the [...]
Today when I tested the specific gravity of the Shiraz, it was unchanged from yesterday, meaning that fermentation has completed. Tomorrow I’ll take the next step: clarifying and stabilizing the wine.
Meanwhile, the pH of the Syrah is rising, for no reason I can figure out. On the advice of Rick at Fermentation Solutions, I added [...]
Today I stirred up the lees in the Syrah, which brought up a lot of bubbles, indicating that malolactic fermentation is still underway. The wine smells wonderful.
Today I transferred the Shiraz from the primary fermenter to a carboy for secondary fermentation, and finally discarded the grape skins from my vineyard, which I’d added for extra flavor and complexity (I hope).
Harvest Day +16, 3:45 PM: Transferring the Shiraz to a carboy to finish fermentation
Then I put it in the fermentation chamber with [...]
Today the kit wine was fermenting merrily away. I stirred up the lees in the Syrah with a thin dowel, and could see lots of tiny bubbles coming up, indicating that malolactic fermentation (MLF) is underway.
I’d left a small sample of the Syrah overnight to settle out the solids, and tested its ph and [...]
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