Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Day 14 - Rosella's

On Day 14 we determined that the Rosella's bins had finished their fermentations and it was time to prepare to drain and press.

Above I have graphed the fermentation so you can see basically how it ran. The left axis is temperature in °F and the right axis is ° Brix (the units we measure sugar content of the must in). You can see from both the temperature and Brix readings, the fermentation really took off around Day 6 and peaked on Day 10 which is how we want a fermentation to run at Kosta Browne. 86°F peak temperature is perfect - if the temperature goes into the mid 90's, you risk the yeast being killed off and being left with a "stuck" fermentation (where you have sugar left in the must but no viable yeast to digest it - basically a nasty bacteria's wet dream!) and if temperature is too cool, in the 70's say, you don't get full tannin and color extraction. Can't ask for anything more than one in the mid 80's which we hit.

Remember, we added the DAP and Superfood on Day 8, which was a great call - just what the yeast needed to get the fermentation in our sweet zone.

A pretty textbook fermentation really, if I do say so myself!

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