We did a cold maceration of the grapes for 48 hours, keeping them cold with additional dry ice.  Our juice was at a starting brix (sugar content) of 26 – this reading is on the high end of what you want for a good wine that’s not too hot or alcoholic.  I also checked titratable acidity (TA) and pH.  These both give information about the acid content of the wine, although they aren’t necessarily linked.  TA was 6-6.5, and pH was ~3.8.  These are both in a good starting range, so I didn’t do any adjustments to the juice.  I really don’t want to touch it more than I needed to anyway, since I have NO idea what I’m doing!

My partners-in-crime, Josh, Dave, and Paul, were pretty much in charge of starting up the shared batch at their office (where else would you make wine but in a server room?), and they added yeast nutrient and BM45 yeast that they got from Chris to the wine.  I wanted to take the opportunity to experiment, so I added 2 different yeasts to my home batches.  Lot “A” got RC212 yeast, which is supposed to tolerate high alcohol (which we would definitely have) and not produce a lot of H2S, which can be a problem with some yeasts.  It’s a by-product (like a burp) of fermentation and smells like rotten eggs.  Not really what you look for in a wine.  RC212 is also supposed to be good for “good extraction”, which sounded good to me.  It is also supposed to bring out fruit as well as spice components.

Lot “B” got Pasteur red yeast, a yeast strain often used for Bordeaux wines.  It is also supposed to be able to survive in high alcohol and not produce H2S.  It also does not often get “stuck,” which means that it runs out of nutrients and just stops fermenting before all of the sugars are converted to alcohol.  The descriptions of it say it brings out fruitiness and full body in wine.

The yeast was rehydrated before stirring into the buckets.  Then, time to wait and hope it starts to fizz.