On your mark, get set, GO!
- Tartaric addition: Took ~ 1.5L of jiuce and mixed in the 242 g of tartaric. After stirring until dissolved, I poured it into the bin, and stirred it in.
- Fermaid K addition: Took ~ 1 L of juice and mixed in 19 g of Fermaid K. Stirred until dissolved, and poured it into the bin, and stirred it in.
- Yeast addition:
- The yeast datasheet says to use 20-40g/100L of juice. We picked 30 g/100L.
- 151 L * 30g/100L = 45 g yeast. This approximately matches the 1g/gal number I have seen elsewhere.
- The datasheet says mix the yeast with water, 10x the amount of the yeast. If we do 45 g yeast, that’s 450 g = 450 mL of water. I have always mixed 1/2 water and 1/2 juice. So I will take 225 mL distilled water and 225 mL juice.
- Yeast solution temperature = 70 F. Here is the yeast foaming after 20 minutes:
- Must temp at time of yeast addition = 68 F. Datasheet says keep the temps similar.
- Added the yeast and stirred it in after 20 minutes, per the data sheet.
- We are off and running! Hooray!
Finally, I remeasured the pH: 3.41 Wow! It dropped a lot. But it will probably go back up, since we added tartaric based on the final wine volume, and a lot of the juice is still trapped in the grapes. once that juice comes out of the grapes, the pH will probably go back up.
The juice tastes great. I think the acid has made it crisper. The flavors are much stronger. The garage is smelling great. I wish it was inside the house!
The grapes, as I finished up….
