So, if you've been following along, it was really cold in the winery and we installed some heaters last week. They did a pretty quick job of raising the temperature from 54 to about 60 degrees, but the temperature stopped rising.
Maybe it's becuase we didn't have a door separating the cold area from the area we aren't heating. I had hung a blanket across the doorway, but it didn't even cover the entire doorway, so it wasn't doing much good.
On Saturday Bob built and installed a "door." It's in quotes because really it's just two pieces of plywood coupled together and attached to a pair of wheels. It actually operates pretty well by just sliding it across the opening.
What it lacks in elegance is made up for by its function - the room is now a blissfully warm 71 degrees - warm enough to encourage our little bacteria to convert all the malic acid into lactic acid, which should give our wine a "rounder, less sharp" taste. Malic acid is a main acid of apples, while lactic acid is a main acid of milk. If we were making a white wine, we'd leave the malic acid in the mix, but we think red wines taste better with it out. After MaloLactic Fermentation (MLF) completes, we can sulfite our wine, lower the temperature (that should be easy to do), and start planning for our 2009 harvest.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Basking in the RADIENT GLOW!!
HEAT!
Soft glowing rays are, this very instant, warming up our fermentation room. Temperature is a chilly 54 degrees, but I'm hoping it warms up quite a bit over the next few days. 70 would be great, but there's lots of thermal mass in our room (8" concrete floors, walls, and ceilings, not to mention 14 barrels of beautiful purple liquid) so it may take awhile to take the chill off.
I'm not going to say too much about the spark show other than 3-phase electrical panels can be confusing...
Thankfully Cam knows his stuff and sorted it all out for us.
Soft glowing rays are, this very instant, warming up our fermentation room. Temperature is a chilly 54 degrees, but I'm hoping it warms up quite a bit over the next few days. 70 would be great, but there's lots of thermal mass in our room (8" concrete floors, walls, and ceilings, not to mention 14 barrels of beautiful purple liquid) so it may take awhile to take the chill off.
I'm not going to say too much about the spark show other than 3-phase electrical panels can be confusing...
Thankfully Cam knows his stuff and sorted it all out for us.
Monday, January 5, 2009
It's always something...
January 5, 2009. No heat yet.
The heaters were delayed in Portland's Blizzard '08 and we finally got them about a week ago. I've been busy with end of year stuff at work and we also had to do a complete inventory for the Feds so much of our winery time was spent doing paperwork. Also, the state had a paperwork snafu and did not give us notice that we had to fill out more paperwork for them (and pay the annual fee for 2009) by 12/31/08. So, I took a few hours off work, met Jill and Bob at the winery (who were doing the end of year inventory) and went down to the state office to pay the fee on time. The good news is that we're still in compliance with all the proper agencies - federal, state, and local.
The bad news is that it took away time from getting the heaters installed.
Bob got everything installed and wired this past weekend, by himself because I wasn't feeling well. On Saturday night he called me (sick on the couch) to help him track down the correct breaker that supplies the winery sub-panel.
I helped him locate the correct one, and he double-checked that all his wiring was correct and that all the breakers were off. This was the first time we were energizing the sub-panel from the main panel. He then slid the switch to ON...
ZAP! POP! SPARKS A'FLYIN' EVERYWHERE!!!
Yes, our luck continues into 2009! The main wires from the main power feed to the breaker have a short in them, and, when Bob energized the breaker, he got a bonus free spark show!
Bob was spent so he just left everything off and went home. I went over the next day with a meter and determined that one of the hot 240 volt wires is connected to ground somewhere, and that we'll have to have someone pull new lines for us.
I don't really have the heart to write about the 3000 gallon lake that appeared in our pit Thursday night into Friday morning. It has been raining here like it's Portland and our outside pit drain was clogged. The upside is that we have an increadible friend who happens to be our landlord who helped us unclog the drains and pump out the water. Dan has reached superstar status in our book.
If it continues like this, 2009 is going to be an exciting year for us!
The heaters were delayed in Portland's Blizzard '08 and we finally got them about a week ago. I've been busy with end of year stuff at work and we also had to do a complete inventory for the Feds so much of our winery time was spent doing paperwork. Also, the state had a paperwork snafu and did not give us notice that we had to fill out more paperwork for them (and pay the annual fee for 2009) by 12/31/08. So, I took a few hours off work, met Jill and Bob at the winery (who were doing the end of year inventory) and went down to the state office to pay the fee on time. The good news is that we're still in compliance with all the proper agencies - federal, state, and local.
The bad news is that it took away time from getting the heaters installed.
Bob got everything installed and wired this past weekend, by himself because I wasn't feeling well. On Saturday night he called me (sick on the couch) to help him track down the correct breaker that supplies the winery sub-panel.
I helped him locate the correct one, and he double-checked that all his wiring was correct and that all the breakers were off. This was the first time we were energizing the sub-panel from the main panel. He then slid the switch to ON...
ZAP! POP! SPARKS A'FLYIN' EVERYWHERE!!!
Yes, our luck continues into 2009! The main wires from the main power feed to the breaker have a short in them, and, when Bob energized the breaker, he got a bonus free spark show!
Bob was spent so he just left everything off and went home. I went over the next day with a meter and determined that one of the hot 240 volt wires is connected to ground somewhere, and that we'll have to have someone pull new lines for us.
I don't really have the heart to write about the 3000 gallon lake that appeared in our pit Thursday night into Friday morning. It has been raining here like it's Portland and our outside pit drain was clogged. The upside is that we have an increadible friend who happens to be our landlord who helped us unclog the drains and pump out the water. Dan has reached superstar status in our book.
If it continues like this, 2009 is going to be an exciting year for us!
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