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 […]
Tag archive: racking wine
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, […]
The merlot has been on my mind. I’m bothered that the MLF didn’t finish, although the MLF in the barrel batch did not complete either. But, since the Cab MLF went great, I feel like there should be something proactive I can and should do to try to make it work. I’m worried that it […]
We racked the cab out of the lovely grey trash cans into an even lovelier new American oak barrel with medium toast. Dave and I ended up with a full 30 gallon barrel plus a 6 gallon carboy and another 2 gallon bottle full of fine lees. I checked the malic acid, and it’s down […]
The Montagnac vieux Chateau d’Oc kit came with a funky little attachment to go over the end of the racking cane, apparently to keep the raisins from clogging it when racking. It says: “To successfully rack the kit and leave the sediment and grape skins behind, you will need to remove the cap off of […]
The chardonnay is clearing nicely. This kit gets racked once before bottling time, to give it an extra polish. I hope it settles out as well as the Pinot Gris did.
Chardonnay is at SG 1.00, time to rack! Smells yummy! You can see the bits of the oak chips that were added in the primary. Some did make it through the racking cane into the secondary, but it should be OK — they’ll fall out over time (I assume).
The yeast took off, and after 2 days the shower smelled like wine! It’s cool and creepy all at once. The instructions said to wait 5-7 days to check the specific gravity, so I checked it the next weekend after starting it out of convenience. The SG was just right, so I put the bucket […]