(no relation of this topic to the title… I just had the Foghat song running through my skull for some reason)
It’s now Day 5 (Day 3+ of fermentation) and the yeast are really doing their thing. You can see from the chart below that the temperature has risen quickly to around 75F (23.9 C) and the Brix, or sugar level, has dropped dramatically, down to 6 ( or 1.023 SG). If it keeps going like this, I may be racking to the carboy this weekend.
All along I have been punching down the cap twice a day to continue extracting color and tannins, though you won’t get much more color extraction past about 3 days. When we are ready to rack into the carboy, we will siphon the “free-run” out first which is the plain wine juice. This is generally considered the premium part of the wine and often some winemakers will only use the free-run for their wine. However, we will also take the rest of the must (or lees) and press the remaining juice out of them to a certain level. This is generally done in fractions which include differing levels of pressure. At each fraction, more and more of the phenolics and tannic characters are extracted from the seeds and skins, which can get bitter pretty quick. So, this means I will taste the resulting juice each time before I decide to add it to the carboy. Once (or if) I get to a point where the pressed juice is too bitter, I will not add it and it will be tossed. Since I am doing the pressing by hand, I am not sure I will have much of a problem here.
