Still cold - no heat yet

So, the heaters have been ordered but haven't arrived. It's been very cold in Portland for the last week, many days in the low 20s. Today the kids have been home from school for the 4th straight day - Jill is calling it "day 4 of the hostage crisis," and it looks like tomorrow isn't going to get any better, weather-wise.

Hopefully the heaters will arrive on Friday so that we can install them this weekend. We decided to go with electric quartz heaters - like those you see at a bus stop or at a restaurant. We quickly decided against gas or propane, even though we have gas in the building, because we'd have to run a supply pipe (somewhat expensive) and also an exhaust pipe. Since the fermentation room is a large concrete box, it's not easy to run anything of large diameter into or out of it, so running a vent (minimum 3 inches) would have been a pain. Plus we worried about the heater producing "off" odors from the burning gas. For all these reasons, we quickly abandoned the thought of using gas heat.

Thus, we knew we were going to install electric heaters, but didn't know what kind. A fan heater has a heating element and a fan that blows over it to carry the heat throughout the room. A quartz heater has no fan - instead it radiates infared heat, as well as a little light, directly onto a surface. Literally it heats just as the sun does - if you're directly in the sun you feel very warm, but the sun also warms up stuff it shines on, which radiates heat itself back into the room. The major benefit of all of this is that there is no fan, which is desirable for us. It doesn't matter so much while wine is in the barrel, but we're also going to use the heaters during primary fermentation. Since we ferment in open-top containers, we rely on the Carbon Dioxide blanket of gas that the yeast produce to protect the wine from oxidation. If we had a fan blowing in the room, it would disrupt the CO2 layer that protects the wine. Ergo, we're installing quartz heaters rather than fan heaters.

If they ever come. (Brrr)

Drat! (the -polite- way to say what I really mean)

So, we installed an electric sub-panel into the winery on Sunday. It's a 40 Amp service, which should provide enough power for us because lighting will be on a separate circuit.

We had to bring in more power because we need heat. Our barrels are colder than we'd like if we want MaloLactic Fermentation (MLF) to complete anytime soon. We want MLF to complete so we can protect the wine from spoilage by adding sulphite. (You know the "Contains Sulfites" notice on wine labels - it's on there because winemakers add sulphite to preserve the wine. Sulfite free wine is fine for those who want to drink wines right away, but those aren't the kind of wines we're trying to make). Anyway, we can't add sulphite yet because it will inhibit MLF.

Cold temperatures also inhibit MLF, which is why we want heat...which is why we needed to add the new electrical service.

So, to prepare the fermentation room to add the new heater, Jill was moving barrels around while I was helping with the wiring. Jill asked me to move a tank for her because she couldn't move it. I thought she couldn't get the pallet jack over the wood slat in the pallet holding the tank, so I did it for her. When I put the pallet jack in I accidentally hit the open/close valve on the bottom of the tank with the pallet jack. Drat. The tanks aren't that strong and I really didn't want to be banging it around.

I knelt down to inspect the valve to make sure I hadn't creased the tank or really caused any damage. Then, I wondered, "why is this valve on here anyway -- it's just sticking out being in the way. So I unclamped the valve.

AAARRRGGGHHHH!!! - wine spray everywhere! The tank was full! (well, it had about 50 gallons in it anyway). So, I'm trying to re-clamp the valve at the same time calling for help from Jill and Cam. We're sitting there trying to figure out what to do when I realize that we can try to pump it out before it spills out on the floor and is a complete waste.

Everyone scrambles to hook up the pump while I'm holding the valve with my hands, getting sprayed the whole time. Finally the pump is hooked up and we are able to empty the tank.

Whew, crises avoided.

We still lost several gallons of wine - certainly more than we should have had I been paying more attention. I felt like crap and for that matter still do.

We cleaned up the mess and I've taken a vow to never remove any clamp without twice inspecting that the tank is empty...

Racking Day

Sunday 11/30 was "racking" day. Basically, after you press the wine from the fermented grapes it isn't very clear. There is all kind of stuff still in it, like small bits of skins, pulp (grape guts) and various other things. A big component of the "stuff" (called "lees") is dead yeast cells, which are held in suspension during the pressing and carried by the pump after press. Most wineries have large tanks that they pump the wine into and the lees settles out. After a few days they pump it into barrels for the long aging process.

But, because we are a very small winery with a limited equipment budget we don't have settling tanks.

Thus, our only option is to pump directly to barrels including all the lees with the pressed wine. The only concern with this action is that, most winemakers believe (rightly so, in my experience), that if you leave the wine on the lees too long it can develop funky smells and tastes. So, pretty soon after we fill the barrels we have to empty them, leaving the lees behind, then clean out the barrels and return the clean wine to it. That process is called racking.

Typically, we will rack very early on, several days after pressing, then 3 or 4 times over the course of the barrel aging process. Each time we rack we sample the wine (woohoo!), determine how it is doing, and may make small adjustments. More on that later.