Sam and I drove to Drytown Cellars (near plymouth, in Amador county) today to pick up the club project red wine (Barbera). We got there at about 12:20, and there was mass confusion. We somehow got our 250 lbs into the truck, paid, and got out of there…I’m still not real sure what was going on. We added 50 ppm SO2 before leaving.
When we measured the sugar at the winery, it was 26 Brix. We stopped at American Ice Company on Del Paso on the way back and bought 30 lbs of dry ice. We through 10 lbs into the macrobin. We left the other 20 lbs (2 10lb blocks) in the cooler and drove back to the winery.
I should have taken a picture of the dry ice in the must. It looked very cool with all the smoking. We bailed the smoking must and dry ice into a primary fermenter and wheeled it back to the winery.
The temperature of the must was about 75 degrees when we got back (around 2:30), and it dropped to about 65 degrees by 4:00.
I tested the must and got these numbers:
26.8 Brix
.7 TA (not real sure about this)
pH 3.31
We stirred it up a little and then put a lid on it. The goal with this must is to keep it cold and prevent fermentation for 24-48 hours in order to extract more color from the skins.
UPDATE: We took some of the must to Revolution Wines and had them test with their (far superior) equipment. Here are they numbers they got:
pH 3.23
TA 1.095