By Christopher Null
[continued from Winebloggin’ Episode III]
More and more additives go into the mix, all punched down with what looks like an enormous potato masher. There’s tartaric acid, several types of powdered tannins, and enzymes. A day goes by, then I add a variety of "yeast nutrients," and finally, the yeast itself.
Preparing the yeast is a nerve-wracking process that requires getting water to the proper temperature: 98.6 degrees, in fact. I spend a grueling 20 minutes fiddling with a thermometer under the faucet to try to get it perfect. But the analog controls on typical kitchen sink are pretty brutish when it comes to getting water to a temperature that precise. Finally I figure I’m close enough and continue.
After the yeast is prepared, it goes into the WinePod, but you can’t just dump it in all at once. The process continues by resting the cup of yeast and water on top of the grape-juice-and-skin-combo (now called "must") then slowly adding a tablespoon of cold must into the warm yeast mixture, one tablespoon per minute. Once the temperature is cool enough, I finally dump it in, crank the heat up to 70 degrees, and let it rest overnight…certain that I’ve managed to kill the yeast somewhere along the way.
The next day I taste the must. It still tastes just fine, very sweet and a little warm, kind of like a kids drink left out in the sun. I turn my attention to cleaning out the grape buckets, which I’ve let go for far too long. Baffled about how to do it, I rinse them out in the shower, which ends up looking like the killing floor in a slaughterhouse.
With yeast added, fermentation has officially begun, and over the next few days it becomes apparent that the yeast is not dead but is doing its job. The brix sensor, which measures the amount of sugar in the must, finally starts to fall as the yeast eat it up and poop out alcohol.
Every day the must has to be attended to: As fermentation progresses, the skins don’t fall to the bottom of the tank like you might expect. Instead they rise to the top. After three days the skins are about six inches from the top. A day later they’re two inches from the top. The following day they are pushing the lid off the WinePod, threatening to overflow, a truly horrifying prospect. Part of the process involves the "daily punchdown," which means using the behemoth potato masher to push the skins back down into the foaming juice below. It’s surprisingly hard to do and even messier. Every time it means skins spill out of the tank and juice goes everywhere. I get a chuckle every time I see the WineCoach video that shows a dainty housewife doing the job in her pristine, clean kitchen. Somehow she never spills a drop.
After nearly a week things are finally really cooking. One day, when the brix level hits 17, means punching down the cap three times (and washing the punchdown tool three times). It’s a lot of work but it means we’re at the peak of fermentation, which means that grape juice is inching closer to wine.
You wouldn’t know it from the taste, which is now something of a combination of sweet juice and sort-of stale, old wine. It’s pretty revolting at this point — not quite one thing or the other — but it’s interesting to taste the process every day as the sugar is eaten away.
Other than cleaning up spilled grape skins — which now show up at random all over the house — my biggest challenge is wrestling with the WineCoach software. For a week the WinePod shows falling brix, but WineCoach is stuck at 25 brix and won’t advance to the next step: Finally I’m told to leave my laptop hooked up for a full hour to the WinePod, which does the trick and advances things along. The WinePod website goes down one day; my bookmarks no longer work. Turns out the URL structure is changed overnight, no warning. WineCoach also tends to disagree with the printed manuals on numerous points. It’s not uncommon for me to have three different suggestions on additions to the must, including some personal advice from the company CEO. Ultimately I try to do what the boss says. That way I can blame someone else if things go awry.
Fermentation continues for another few weeks, with no big surprises in store. I’ll check in again once fermentation is complete and it’s time to transfer the wine from the WinePod to the oak barrel, where it will age for a few months before it’s ready to drink.
[to be continued]
(Photo by Christopher Null)
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