9/6/2020

For 2020 we decided to abandon our survey protocol and instead based our crush date on two factors:

The crush dates for commercial wineries in our general area.

The flavor and sweetness analysis by our team of young grape testers. 

All of these indicated Labor Day (September 5th) as an ideal crush day.

Waiting this long to pick had a price.  About 80% of the grape clusters in the vineyard had already gone to raisin and were unusable.  There were two sections that had usable grapes.  The ridge area, while largely gone to raisin-, had a number of vines with canopy that protected clusters, this group made up about 30% of crush.  The main vineyard area next to our summer garden had re-grown large sections of foliage which also gave cover to clusters.  The clusters picked this year were populated with large yellow-green grapes with some grapes starting to purple and raisin.

Even though we only picked two small sections, we ended up collecting 13.5 gallons of must.  We added metabisulfite to read 50PPM and put the fermenters in a temperature controlled room to settle and kill natural flora.

The next day the must was tested at 25.2 Brix, PH 3.48, TA 8.  The Brix reading was slightly high, but the sample was still pretty full of solids, so we expect the actual number is 25 or lower.  Since all of these numbers are within normal tolerances for Sauvignon Blanc, we proceeded to rack the must to new containers pre-loaded with yeast slurry.  The 1.5gallons of extra must was used to top up each primary fermenter to the 6 gallon level.

For the past 5 years or so we've used QA-23  as our yeast.  It's a well known yeast for Sauvigon Blanc and other aromatic white varietals.   Unfortunately this year our local brewing/winemaking store had closed down and the only other stores in range were out of QA-23.  Luckily we did have a brick of Laffort VL3 and its hydration medium on hand, so we moved forward with that as the yeast for this year.

Our intention is to rack to secondary as soon as the wine reaches final gravity and then let it sit in secondary for 2-3 months before either bulk aging or bottling.

9/6/2020

2019 was a year of challenges.  One of the major sections of the vineyard did not reach veraison in a normal way, those sections saw a large number of clusters with small dark green fruit instead of the expected large yellow-green fruit.  That being said, our vineyard surveys indicated we were at an average of25 Brix on August 17th, so we picked on the weekend of August 24th.  Surveys of the vei

As a side note, our survey protocol has been the same for at least five years now.  We have broken up the vineyard into six unique sections based on their geography.  On a survey we pull between 20 and 40 grapes randomly from clusters in each section.  We manually crush each collection and test for sugar using a refractometer.  We collect each of the readings and then do a final reading by combining all the juice together.  Each year this results in a range of readings.  Some sections may be higher or lower than others, and we use a sliding weighted average to estimate the sugar level in the entire vineyard.

We picked and crushed on Saturday,  avoiding the small dark green fruit.  The crush resulted in a must reading at 19 Brix, too low to meet the specifications of a Sauvignon Blanc.  So, on Sunday we went back and picked what was left in the vineyard, including the small green clusters because those happened to have a high sugar content.  This got us to 23 Brix, which was good enough to move forward.  Total must came to 18 gallons which were spread across three six gallon fermenters.

I don't have the numbers for the must prior to pitching, but my recollection was that PH, TA and Brix were all within acceptable parameters.

We pitched QA-23 as usual and saw primary fermentation proceed normally at about 68F.  We transferred from primary to secondary at four weeks, which is where we first noticed a problem.  The young wine at that point had a very sour and astringent flavor.  We left it in the fermenters for another two months, hoping the flavor would mellow out.  Ultimately the final wine retained the sour and astringent flavor profile was was discarded.

Takeaways from this year were: 1. Our survey protocol is flawed and needs work.  2. We picked too early. 3. We should not use anything other than normal looking yellow-green clusters.

6/12/2018

One of our goals for the 2017 vintage was to enter it into as many amateur winemaking competitions as possible to collect useful feedback on our process and guidance for the future.  For amateur winemaking competitions there appear to be two seasons: Spring and Fall.

For the Spring Season we entered:

• The Bottle Shock Open - A competition run relatively locally (out of Lodi) 

• Great American Amateur International Wine Competition - Run under the auspices of the Raise a Glass foundation

• WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition - WineMaker magazine's yearly wine competition

• The California State Fair Home Wine Competition - California's yearly amateur competition

We are pleased to report that we did pretty well!  We earned:

• Bottle Shock - Silver

• Great American - Bronze

• WineMaker International - Bronze

• California State Fair - Gold

We are reviewing the tasting notes and are already planning on integrating their feedback into next year's efforts.

In the Fall we plan to enter:

• AWS Amateur Wine Competition - A nationwide competition we've entered in the past

• Cellarmasters of Los Angeles - A relatively local competition we've had our eye on

We'll update this post with the hardware (once we get it all).

11/6/2017

With filtering already complete and a completely sterile wine in the bright tank, bottling was easier than ever this year.  At bottling time the wine measured:

Brix: 0 (target 0)

PH:​ 3.2 (target <3.5)

TA: 7.6 g/L (target 7-9)

Free SO2: 22 g/L

Before bottling we rinsed the bottles in a cleaning solution of one teaspoon of potassium metabisulfite crystals and a pinch of citric acid per quart of distilled water.  We also soaked the corks in 2g of metabisulfite per gallon of water.

Bottling proceeded smoothly and resulted in a little over 10 cases: 124 bottles in all.  This works out to roughly 25 gallons of bottled wine, which given that we started with 50 gallons of grape must is more production loss than expected.  That being said, it's easily explained by the unexpected leavings from the first racking with the inline filter.

We expect the wine will be past the stabilization "bottle shock" period by January and are looking forward to tasting it!

11/3/2017

Primary Fermentation

Primary Fermentation occurred over 15 days, from 8/23 to 9/7.  Fermentation completed, going from 25 Brix to 0 Brix, resulting in an ABV of 15%.  This is higher than the standard range for Sauvingon Blanc (12.5-14.5).  We opted to leave the must at picked concentration rather than add acidified water.  However, next year we may adjust if we end up on the high side again.  Temperature during primary fermentation was well controlled, averaging at the target 60F with the highest spike being 62.5F.

Racking to Secondary

The wine was racked to the secondary tank on 9/14/2017.  The pre-racking measurements were:

Brix: 0 (target 0)

PH:​ 3.17 (target <3.5)

TA: 8 g/L (target 7-9)

Free SO2: 5 mg/L

Overall these measurements were inline with expectations.  We added 9g of metabisulifte at racking to bring the SO2 levels up to 40 g/L.  In an attempt to reduce gross lees in this transfer we elected to use an inline filter screen at the coupling from the source tank.  However, in practice the filter fouled quickly and greatly restricted the flow rate from the pump.  We ultimately had to remove it in order to complete the racking.  Unfortunately the confusion from the slow racking caused us to leave more in the source tank than desired.  We estimate around 10 gallons of usable wine were left behind.  Needless to say we won't be doing that again.

Secondary Fermentation

Secondary fermentation was uneventful.  We maintained an average secondary temperature of 49F, lowering the temperature to 41F for a somewhat cold crash for a few weeks prior to filtering / bottling.

Sterile Filtering

Last year we had a bad result from the wine we ran through the SuperJet filter.  The SuperJet is a pump filter which runs the wine through a set of filter pads.  We use their Sterile filter pads which filter out anything larger than .5 microns.  After reading more about ideal process we determined that the problems likely stemmed from not properly saturating the filters with a citric acid and metabisulfite solution. 

In order to be more confident in filtering we performed a test filtering two weeks prior to bottling.  We filtered one gallon into a growler and bottled a control sample directly from the tank.  When sampled after two weeks we found the sterile filtered wine was completely clear and retained fruit aromas and complexity.  The control sample arguably had a slightly more pronounced fruit character, but was cloudy and had some harsher aromatics in evidence.  We therefore resolved to sterile filter the wine this year.

We added 6g of potassium metabisulfite to the target (bright) tank before filtering to bring the wine up to the desired level of 25 g/L for bottling.  We also brought the wine temperature up to 55F before filtering to attempt to reduce the effect of any oxygen contact during filtering.  Filtering itself was easily accomplished following our standard tank management protocol.  We were even able to filter some of the wine from the tank drain after dumping the worst of the lees.

8/23/2017

We started vineyard surveys late again this year, on July 23rd, finding an average of 17 Brix.  We surveyed again on August 13th finding  an average of 24 Brix.  Thus the decision was made to crush on the following Saturday, August 19th.  Sadly, our smallest vine section was eaten by deer and turkeys resulting in a total loss.

We followed our standard protocol for this year's crush with two changes: we added a sorting step to weed out less than ideal clusters and removed the washing/straining step.  We eliminated the washing as we found it had little impact on the quality of the collected must.  Sorting was chosen due to surveys of the vineyard which had indicated a larger crop than last year but with a higher percentage of clusters in an unripe, desiccated, or sun-damaged state.  

We were aggressive in sorting, resulting in our using somewhere less than half of the clusters on the vines.  We ultimately collected 50 gallons of must.  If we had followed normal protocol, we could have collected anywhere between 80 and 100 gallons of must.

The collected must tested at:

Brix: 25 (target 22-25)

PH:​ 3.17 (target <3.5)

TA: 5 g/L (target 7-9)

We added Potassium Metabisulfite to reach an 85g/L of free SO2.  We also added 180g of Tartaric Acid dissolved in a small amount of distilled water to bring the TA closer to range.  Collected volume necessitated use of the cooling snake again this year.  We let the juice rest at 52F for 48 hours before pitching yeast.  Testing the must prior to pitching found:

Brix: 25 (target 22-25)

PH:​ 3.08 (target <3.5)

TA: 6.5 g/L (target 7-9)

We're comfortable with these reading as they seem to be mirrored by commercial wine profiles we were able to find anecdotally.

We pitched 75g of Lallemand QA-23 yeast, rehydrated using GoFerm Protect Evolution yeast nutrient.  Rather than pitch into the collected must, this year we added the rehydrated yeast to the second tank and racked the must onto the yeast.  Our goal was to leave gross solids behind and ferment off the cleanest must possible.

2/7/2017

308 bottles / 25+ cases / 61 gallons

Our previous bottling sessions involved gravity fed bottling from small fermenters into bottles.  We then flushed the necks with CO2 before corking.  This year we wanted to improve the process, so we bought a vacuum bottle filler by Buon Vino which will allow us to draw directly from a tank.  We also bought a Buon Vino wine filter, as last year's edition developed undesirable sediment in the bottles.

We bought 22 cases of clear (flint) claret-style bottles from Encore Glass in Fairfield.  They normally only sell by the pallet (96 cases) or half-pallet (48 cases), but they had 22 remaining cases of a discontinued mold that we were able to pick up for a great price. They were great to work with and effectively local, which was nice.  We also emptied and washed out six cases of last year's wine to handle overrun.

Two weeks before bottling day we gave the new equipment a shakeout test, bottling one filtered and unfiltered bottle.  On bottling morning we opened and tasted those.  We were able to detect little difference between filtered and unfiltered, but both wines showed excess acidity and a loss of fruit character.  Our hope is this was a result of bottle shock.  We then tasted a sample directly from the tank, which had the expected character.  Given the concern about affected character, we decided to bottle the majority of the wine unfiltered.

From 10:30am to 3:00pm we filled 308 bottles, which comprises 25 cases and change.  From our starting volume of 83 gallons we ended up with 61 gallons of wine.  This was somewhat higher than expected loss, but we were happy with the amount we bottled.  Of the 25 cases, 21 were unfiltered leaving 4 filtered cases.  We will be letting these sit for a month before opening.

Another improvement we made this year was increasing the size of the labels to 4x5in and the addition of white heat shrink sleeves.  We created a labeling jig, which helped to apply more even labels.  We also learned that there is an art to heat shrinking sleeves.  This process was slow moving, so we only labeled and capped four cases during the day.  We'll label and cap the rest over the next month or two.

9/19/2016

Two weeks after the first racking we tested the wine, resulting in:

PH: 3.12 

TA: 7.6 g/L

Free SO2: 2 mg/L

Unfortunately, the Free SO2 level was much lower than desired.  Sensory testing indicated a new flavor in the wine we think was evidence of the beginnings of malolactic fermentation.  MLF is undesirable in Sauvignon Blanc so we decided to rack the wine again and make several additions.

During racking we added 21.2g of Potassium Metabisulfite for an expected 40 mg/L additon level.  We also added 113g of rehydrated bentonite to aid in clarification.  We have combined this with a temperature reduction to 44F with the goal of both inhibiting the malolactic bacteria as well as fostering the precipitation of tartrate crystals.

Overall we would have preferred to perform these steps later in fermentation but deemed it prudent given the tested wine.

Assessment of the wine the following day resulted in a reading of 16 mg/L Free SO2, which should be sufficient to inhibit bacteria and protect the wine for bulk storage.

9/8/2016

Primary fermentation completed after one week.  We had intended to add Fermaid-K in the last third of fermentation, but the later samples were so thick with suspended yeast we weren't able to get an accurate reading until fermentation was complete.

At the end of primary fermentation we observed:

Brix: 0

PH: 3.09

TA: 7.6 g/L

Free SO2: 0 mg/L

We transferred the wine from the primary fermenter into secondary on August 28th.  Given that this was our first time actually performing a transfer it was a time consuming but ultimately successful process.  One of our goals for this process was to transfer the wine with little to no oxygen contact.  We had intended to source food grade Argon gas for the transfer process, but were unable to find any in a size we could deal with.  Argon is most desirable since it is an inert gas that is heavier than air and can be floated on top of the liquid.  Instead we went with CO2, which we had on-hand.

We started by thoroughly cleaning the secondary fermenter and preparing its variable volume lid for use.  The VVTs (variable volume tanks) ship with a cheapish clear inner tube that runs around the lid so you can inflate it to maintain a strong seal that will keep oxygen out.  In our case we found that we couldn't maintain pressure with the default tube so we bought upgraded tubes.  These tubes are thick rubber and do a great job of holding a seal with no leakage.  The other modifications we have made to the VVT lids are to drill a large hole (same size as the hole for the airlock) to allow room for the cooling snake and bung as well as a smaller hole in the center of the tank to fit the dual-hole stopper that holds both temperature probes.

Once we had the secondary fermenter and lid cleaned sanitized and prepared, we filled it with water to the level of the wine in the primary.  We then sank the VVT lid down to the level of the water and pressurized its seal.  We cobbled together a connector that could fit the CO2 output to the small hole for temperature probes and pumped CO2 into the target tank while we drained it from the bottom.  This should have guaranteed that the only gas in the target tank was CO2.

Now that the target tank was filled with CO2 we unpacked the transfer pump and its hoses and cleaned it.  We found that the pump was failing, most likely because we didn't follow procedures to safely store the pump after its last season.  Luckily we were able to get it going and successfully sanitized it.  We haven't winterized the pump at this point because we expect to use it for a racking for bulk storage and another transfer during bottling.  However, we will follow the off-season procedures after bottling this year so we don't find ourselves disassembling the impeller assembly on racking day.

Actual transfer was accomplished by hooking up the CO2 supply to the top of the primary fermenter and pumping directly from the sample port on the primary into the sample port on the target.  We used the racking arms to pull from directly above the lees, although since we were doing this blind we expect that we pulled a decent amount of lees into the secondary tank.  This process should have guaranteed minimal oxygen contact.

Finally, we forgot to create an SO2 solution beforehand to add to the transfer tank.  Luckily we had some Scott's Inodose tabs on hand and were able to add them.  Their effervescent action should take care of distributing the SO2 evenly through the tank.  We added a 2g and 5g tab to reach 25ppm of free SO2 in the 75 gallons we racked into the secondary.

Notes for next racking:

Buy a proper stopper to attach the CO2 supply to the temperature probe port on the VVT lid.

Source food grade Argon, if possible.

Shorten the transfer hose so we don't lose as much wine in the host during the transfer process.

Buy an inline sightglass to better see the amount of lees being transferred

OR buy a flexible camera rig with a light so we can eyeball the racking arm's level in relation to the lees

Remember to create an add a SO2 solution (if necessary)to the target tank before racking

9/5/2016

One of the largest areas of concern with our use of the variable volume fermenters is monitoring temperature.  In 2014 the circulation pump failed during primary fermentation.  When I checked in on the tank that night the temperature was near 90F and the stressed yeast had already spoiled the flavor profile of the wine.

This year we're doing a number of things differently.  First and foremost we set up a separate temperature controller for the circulation pump which has a temperature sensor suspended in the wine.  This allows us to maintain the glycol bath at 33F and run the circulation pump for shorter intervals.  It also provides a better guarantee of fermentation temperature as the temp controller for the circulation pump will run until the wine surrounding the sensor hits the target threshold.

The second change was to add a temperature monitor to the tank.  Looking online there are a number of solutions at the commercial level for monitoring submersible temperature probes via wifi or cellular connections.  We need a cellular connection because the garage we use for wine production is detached from the house and out of wifi range.  Unfortunately these solutions cost hundreds of dollars to purchase and have expensive data subscription services.

Enter the Particle Electron.  This inexpensive device can update cloud servers via an inexpensive 3G connection and can be configured with pretty much any sensor you can imagine.  Using an electron devkit and a waterproof temperature sensor I was able to build a unit that transmits hourly temperature readings to the particle cloud servers.  I then created recipes on IFTT to both push a notification to my phone and log the temperature to a google spreadsheet.  After this season is over I have a number of improvements to make to the system including handling the occasional spurious reading.  That being said, I'm very happy that I'm getting regular updates of temperature readings and that our temperatures have been in the desired ranges for all stages so far.

8/14/2016

Last year's pitching was fairly disastrous.  Running from memory we pitched directly into cold must and ended up with no fermentation activity for several days until we performed a simple water hydration.

This year, we did it right.  We followed MoreWine's yeast hydration doc.

Following that we used:

100g GoFerm Protect

1700 ml Distilled Water

90g QA-23 Yeast (we overpitched by ~5% for safety)

Following their process was easy and resulted in a yeast slurry that was very active.  In fact, we pitched the yeast mere seconds before it bubbled out of the jug we were carrying it in.

One question for the future is:  Reading the Lallemand Yeast Pitching Protocol Document it indicates you should place the yeast slurry in the container as you fill with juice.  We put our must in a container and chill to a holding temperature of 55F while killing bacteria with 50ppm of SO2.  Should we then rack the must into a different container when adding yeast, or dump it through the access port like we did this time?  We use variable volume tanks, so racking requires some effort.

8/14/2016

The 2016 crush is over, resulting in 84 gallons of grape must with the following characteristics:

Brix: 21 (target 22-25)

PH: 3.2 (target  < 3.5)

TA: 7.2 g/L (target 7-9 ideal 8.5-9)

Overall, these numbers should work.  If the wine doesn't have as bright and acidic flavor as desired we may need to adjust acidity next year.

This crush we focused on getting the grapes crushed as quickly as possible after picking.  Here's what the day's schedule looked like:

7:30 am - Start of picking (we let our helpers do almost all the picking this year)

7:30 am - Mixed citric acid cleaning solution (3stp/G) in 20G bucket (we actually used Barrel Cleanse instead)

8:00am - Cleaned stainless fermenter and lid, rinsed with water, rinsed again with StarSan solution

8:30am - Set up and cleaned, rinsed, sanitized Crusher/Destemmer and Hydraulic Press

9:00am - Began crush.

1:30pm - Ended crush.

We made a few modifications to our crush process this year:

We drilled holes in a few buckets and used these to collect grapes from the tarp.  We then dunked the buckets in a large barrel of water to wash off dirt and sediment.  This worked well although for next year we need to use two hoses: one to press grapes and one to rinse equipment or fill buckets with water.

We added a valve to the hydraulic press hose to more easily manage the press with one person.

We used a fine mesh bag in the buckets used to collect the pressed liquid, straining the liquid fully before dumping into the fermenter.  This worked really well, we should buy more bags for next year so we don't have to rinse them as often.

Problems: Few to none.  The Crusher/Destemmer got jammed up a few times, but we were able to free it each time.  We also didn't collect enough juice to use the cooling jacket for the fermenter so we will be using the cooling snake instead.  We had pre-dremeled a new hole in the variable volume lid in preparation for this eventuality.

After testing we added 1/4tsp/G potassium metabisulfite and set the cooling system to 55F.  Initial must temp was 85F and had cooled to 68F by 9:30pm.  By 6:30am on Sunday the must was at target temp.

8/12/2016

The last two years of winemaking have been a learning experience, ultimately resulting in wines of lesser quality.  Two years ago the batch experienced high-temperatures during intiial fermentation leaving a wine with little armoatics or varietal character and some off flavors/aromas.  Last year's effort was an attempt to go back to the basics from our first year, but suffered from a hard to start fermentation, higher than desirable fermentation temperature, oxidation from multiple rackings due to the use of multiple smaller fermenters and finally from inadequate filtering during the bottling process resulting in bottles with excess sediment.

This year we are renewing our focus on a more professional approach. We will: return to fermentation in our steel fermenters, buy new filtering and bottling hardware and use our new Vinmetrica testing equipment to better monitor the fermentation process and state of the wine.  We've done some stress testing on the chiller equipment and have consulted with some industry contacts to highlight best practices. As of today the vineyard is averaging near 22 Brix, so this weekend will be our crush.  We're optimistic that we will be able to achieve our goals this year.

9/21/2014

Today's Measure:

       result ~ (optimal pre-ferment range for White Wine)

Titratable Acidity (TA): 9 g/L ~  (7-9 g/L)

Free Sulfur Dioxide: 0ppm ~ (20-60ppm)

PH: 3 ~ (3.2-3.5PH)

Brix: 0 - (21-25 Brix)

Temperature: 18C (64.4F) - (10-28C)

So, we have reached terminal gravity and the final ABV (alcohol by volume) is 14.4%.  That's on the strong side for Sauvignon Blancs, which generally exist in the 12.8%-13.8% range.  Nothing to worry about there though.

The Free SO2 isn't suprising, with our hot fermentation the wine used up more SO2 than it would have if it had fermented at a lower temperature.  We'll be adding more Potassium Metabisulfite tomorrow to get that back up, which we would have done anyway.  In this case we'll just be adding more than we would have otherwise.

The temp making it down to 18C (64.4F) is a bit of a relief as well.  We're still well above our target of 12.8C (55F), but we've dropped significantly from the hot temperatures we had last week.  I'm still struggling to get the Glycol Chiller to adjust its temp, so it's back to the operational manual for me.  From reading, the likely penalty for the high-temp fermentation is that we will have let some of the volatile compounds and aromatics escape, so this year may not have as pronounced fruit character.  We won't be able to tell for sure for quite a while.

Next step is to rack the wine off the lees to the other fermenter tomorrow night.  We would have done this during the weekend, but our install of a 220V outlet for the pump is lagging and won't be done until tomorrow.  During this process we will be adding 11.3 grams of Potassium Metabisulfite targeto protect the wine as it moves into stabilization and clearing.

9/11/2014

Monitoring over the last three days has show a slow decrease in temperatures, now down to 22.4C (72F).  Also decreasing over the timeframe has been the Brix, today's measure was 5 Brix meaning the wine is currently at 11.8% abv on its way hopefully to 14.4%.

There is still a sulfur smell around, likely because the temperature is still on the non-ideal side.

I've tried adjusting the target temp for the chiller.  It's currently stuck at a setting of 12.8C (55F), but no luck so far.  I'll try again tomorrow.

9/10/2014

As I mentioned before, the temperature of the must was close to the edge of the yeast's viable fermentation range.  Over the next 24 hours, the temperature of the must increased to 26.7C (80.2F) and past the threshold.  To the yeasts' credit, they kept on working.  However, the high temperature did cause the yeast to give off more SO2 (Sulfur Dioxide) than normal, causing the fermentation vessel and the surrounding area to reek of rotten eggs.

We recieved the cooling snake yesterday and installed it close to midnight.  When then tested the temperature of the must this morning at 6am.  The must is now down to 24.4C (75.9F), which is still higher than our target primary fermentation temp of 14C (57.2F) but is within the yeasts' spec and moving in the right direction.  Hopefully this crisis is now averted.

The rotten egg odor does indicate that the free SO2 is being eaten up faster than normal, so we will need to check free SO2 after we reach terminal gravity to determine how much Potassium Metabisulfite we will need to add.

On a final note, primary fermentation is moving quickly.  This morning's gravity check read 9 Brix so we're well over half the way through primary fermentation.

9/7/2014

Measured a sample this morning with overall good results: 

       result ~ (optimal pre-ferment range for White Wine)

Titratable Acidity (TA): 8.5 g/L ~  (7-9 g/L)

Free Sulfur Dioxide: 23ppm ~ (20-60ppm)

PH: 3.4 ~ (3.2-3.5PH)

Brix: 25.1 - (21-25 Brix)

Temperature: 26.7C (80.1F) - (10-28C)

The temperature is a problem.  Fermol Sauvignon has a temperature range from 10C to 28C and so this temperature is right at the limits of the yeast.

The reason for the high temperature deals with the volume of the tank and the level of the wine.  We have 1000L jacketed fermenters, in which the jackets occupy the middle third of the tank.  The bottom edge of the cooling jacket roughly corresponds to the 300L mark.  Since we collected 230L, we're 70L short of touching the bottom of the jacket.

We had hoped by cranking the chiller on the jacket that the metal conduction would cool the must, but that doesn't appear to be happening enough to be noticeable.

So, we've ordered a 2.5 meter coolling snake, (a double-walled hose that can internally circulate chilled propylene glycol), which should arrive on Tuesday.  Until then, we're going to try something offbeat to get the temperature down.  We bought 10 3L bottles of spring water and are freezing them.  Once frozen, we'll drop them into the tank: they will be sealed tight so we don't add water to the must. That should take the temperature down by at least 5-7C, putting it in a better fermentation band and keeping the must temperature from killing the yeast.

We did swirl in  160g of Fermol Sauvignon this morning and plan to repitch another 160g after the cooling snake is installed and the must is at the desired 11-12C.