I checked in on the wines in the shower to make sure the airlocks weren’t contaminated or dried out, and saw another white layer on our 6-gallon carboy of merlot. This was the first time I saw this white layer in this container, I found it previously on a smaller bottle of this merlot as [...]
Tag archive: racking wine
I discovered that one of the 4-liter bottles of merlot has a funky white layer similar to the one I found on the rescued petite sirah. I hope I can remedy this one better, since the infection came back in the petite sirah after racking. Before racking I dipped cotton swabs in a Kmeta solution [...]
The primitivo has been settling out since October, so it seemed like time to poke at it. I like to splash rack my wine that is bulk aging in carboys at least once to try to give it a little oxygenation while it’s hanging out. The primi has become wonderfully clear already, a lovely purple-ruby [...]
Another full day of wine racking and shuffling! Dave sent me an email that the merlot barrel needed to be topped, so first I racked off the smaller bottles of merlot and took 2 cleared bottles to the office winery to top off the barrel. I thought I had enough to top off and leave [...]
Today was a game of wine shuffling. My hubby commented I’m playing Towers of Hanoi with the wines. Here’s what I have to do: I have 2 carboys of the syrah, and Paul needs those carboys back, so I need to move them into 5-gallon better bottles. The only 5-gallon better bottles I have are [...]
Today we pick up the Petite Sirah grapes from Chris van Alyea at his new digs up in San Marcos. Unfortunately, the grapes arrived later than expected, although it’s not too bad, Paul and I had a lot to do before we head up to get them. We spent about 4 hours racking the merlot [...]
I was racking off my Cellar Craft 5-week Old Vines Zinfandel kit today and noticed this yucky-looking white residue at the top of the wine, sticking to the side of the carboy as it was racked off. There was a lot of lees at the bottom, too. I have an extra liter or so of [...]
Time to rack the Muller-thurgau and barolo. Unfortunately, I got a little overzealous with the stirring of the elderflower tea bags in the MT, and punctured most of them. Now there are cute little flowers floating all over the wine. This became a problem as I was racking, the flowers were small enough to be [...]
The instructions say to rack the Barolo when the SG reaches 1.040-1.050, and the SG today is 1.038. I guess I didn’t expect it to go so fast, although after racking, it’s obviously still in vigorous fermentation. The oak chips get added at this point, they can been seen floating in the foam at the [...]
Time to rack and check the home merlot. I splash racked again, and tested/tasted it. The Free SO2 seemed to be below 20 ppm, so I’m going to try to restart MLF with the dried bacteria I got in December. I’m not optimistic, because I’m pretty sure the bacteria is no good after this long, [...]