Shier Winery

This past Sunday night I made a trip to the Shier to make the repair to the temperature control mechanism on the Winepod . The thermistor, a little temperature sensing resistor attached to the vessel burned out right at the conclusion of our primary fermentation. Fred Hekking of ProVina walked me through the repair while he was driving back from a weekend vacation in Northern California. The repair involved using a soldering iron to melt the polypropylene material in which the old thermistor was buried. I melted the poly, destroyed the old thermistor and carved a trench for the new thermistor. Then I used my finger to push the melted poly over the new thermistor. Fred said that the thermistor was rated to 700 degrees, so I was not afraid that the hot plastic would destroy the replacement part. When the repair was complete, I turned the unit on and it accurately measured the ambient tank temperature. Success! The wine continues to dry down and clear in the carboys. A dark se...

At three weeks into the second phase of fermentation, the Riesling wine is beginning ever so slightly to clear. Last weekend I had a scare when I logged into the server and saw that the air temperature in the basement was 52 degrees. The furnace went out the night before and the temperature was in free fall. I made a brief trip up to the Shier and re-started the furnace. I am wondering if poor ventilation and the high level of carbon dioxide was affecting the oil furnace ignition. The thermometers on the carboys were each at 54 degrees. Again, the D47 yeast survives down to 50 degrees. Close call. When I returned this weekend the carboy temperatures were back up to 57 degrees and the wine was still bubbling up. I measured the SG on a wine sample from the third carboy. It measured 0.999. So far, so good. I will add oak chips to the third carboy in four weeks. If all goes according to plan, I will rack and cold stabilize in five weeks. I also tried to measure the free SO2 level using a...

I am sad to report that the temperature sensor on the Winepod stopped working last Thursday. When I checked on the Winepod over the Wine Coach Software, the cooler was on and the temperature read 133F. Since it was clear that the juice was not actually 133F in the Winepod, I turned off the automatic temperature control. The temperature sensor shortly thereafter raised to 150F. It is stuck at 150F. On Sunday, the brix read just under 1.0, so I decided to rack and not take any more chances with the Wine Pod temp control. The actual temperature of the juice was 60F. After email and phone correspondence with Greg Snell and Fred Hekking of ProVina, it seems most likely that the thermistor has failed. Fred will send out a temporary test thermistor which I will wire into the system to confirm that diagnosis. Considering the cost to ship the WinePod to and from San Jose easily approaches $1000, Fred will probably make the repair in person on his next trip to the east coast. Hopefully the therm...

The above chart shows brix and temperature over time since the beginning of fermentation. Perhaps with a little effort I could derive the equation that produces the brix curve. Looks to me like brix will be zero on 11/9/2008, about 21 days total when fermenting at 61F.

Alicia made a trip up to the Shier on Friday afternoon. When she arrived, the house was ice cold. The thermostat read 45 degrees -- indicating that the furnace was malfunctioning and likely off for the past three days. It gets worse. A 30 foot tree has fallen in the backyard. Luckily it only grazed the trellis on the back of the house. Alicia calls me at work. She goes downstairs. There is the sound of a high pitch squeal. I ask her what that Winepod screen says. Alicia can see the reflection of the lamp in the Winepod display, but there are no numbers. The squeal is unbearable. The Winepod is off and has been off since the power failure on Tuesday morning. Alicia presses the reset button on the battery backup and the squeal stops. She presses it again and the Winepod comes back on. What kind of battery backup leaves you shut down when the power returns? Unbelievable. The must is 54F and the brix is 6. The yeast can survive down to 50 degrees, but not below 50. Did the temperature dro...

On Tuesday morning I awoke at 7:30am to a call from Rest Assured Alarm Systems. The power was out again the Shier as of 5:30am. Considering our apartment building was swaying in the high winds, it was not all that unexpected. The power stayed off until 9:30am, knocking the server out. I researched the power restore features of office servers and it turns out that many newer computers have a BIOS power management option that allows the computer to restore the computer to an on state following power restoration. When I return to the Shier, I will check to see if my computer offers this option. In the meantime, I am hoping that everything is okay because I cannot access the Winepod remotely. Based on the fermentation progress chart, I project the primary fermentation to conclude on Sunday with a brix reading of zero. I will rack to carboys at that time. Meanwhile, I received my juice analysis from the Cornell Wine Lab. Even though I was careful to freeze the sample and send it by Federal ...

The controller on the Winepod is probably the most important feature, even more important than the brix meter (since brix can be measured with the hydrometer). Fermentation at a steady temperature is critical to winemaking because it reduces the variation in fermentation byproducts (no banana odors please!!). The Winepod has an automatic temperature controller. It requires the user to enter lower and upper set point temperatures. The controller turns on the heater when the must drops more than 1 degree below the lower set point and turns on the cooler if it reaches 1 degree above the upper set point. I keep the Winepod in the basement where the temperature is between 54 and 57 degrees F. I originally set the set points at 62 and 63F. Bad idea. This caused the Winepod to constantly switch between running the heater and cooler. The heater would raise the temperature at the sensor so rapidly that it would overshoot 64F and the cooler would turn on. The cooler would overshoot in its coolin...