First Thorough Mix In Cold Soak
- Published Monday October 5, 2009 | Edit
After Six Days of Little Contact
Until now, only some sulfur scrubbing of the brim (Ants and Fruit Flies beware), and Specific Gravity (1.1) reading.
Last night I gave a very gentle stir to the top cap – mostly just to submerge the berries which had been sitting on the top since the 30th September. I did this just to get them out of the air. I did not and have not punched all the way down until this afternoon.
Just after picking and de-stemming on the day the berries went into the fermenter (30th September), the berries had, all in all, taken a pretty good beating but were not wholly mixed together when all in.
After the minor stir last night the taste was not very nice in that is was just very sweet and not a very complete representation of the whole volume.
After punching down today and getting all the juice and berries evened out, the taste is more complete and truly representative of what we have now overall. It tastes like strawberry jam almost exactly. If I were to make a jelly from the current free run I could likely pass it off as strawberry jam which isn’t a bad idea.
Then a Considerable Change in Taste and Color
So now that it is all mixed we see what we really have and it’s considerably better than what we thought we had last night. There is not much color separation (oil and water like effect) but it is faintly there.
What we have in the fermenter now has not been as gently managed as I originally wanted but it has been the most gently managed Pinot Noir I have seen. Hand de-stemming, extremely gently in-frequent (twice) mixing.
About the Cold Soak
It is the 6th day in cold soak and I think I’ll leave it for a few more and see what happens to the color and the taste. I’m going to begin mixing once or twice a day until I introduce some heat. I might use the green house to induce Primary Fermentation and will expect the yeast to start working then.
About any Yeast
I have not added any yeast and am counting of any wild yeasts that are present to kick off the process. If after several days of coaxing the fermentation, no yeast appears to be working, I’ll toss some factory yeast in to save the day.
