Shier Winery

While the wine continues to dry and clear, all I can do is wait. To kill time, I am attaching a security-cam time lapse video. The camera takes a picture whenever there is any motion. I combined a series of pictures to make a short film. A few animals star in the film, if you watch carefully.

The above picture shows carboy 3 with oak chips added on December 20, 2008. The oak remained in the carboy for 12 days. After the new year, I racked the wine to clean carboys and tossed the old oak chips. After racking, I tested a glass of wine from carboy 2. The wine is definitely improved from my last tasting. It is starting to clear up, but the carbonation from the yeast is still strong. It was like drinking champagne. Unfortunately racking involves losing a small volume of wine from each carboy. The loss results from the sludge at the bottom of the carboy. All of the dead yeast makes it impossible to rack the last bit of wine from the bottom if I want to avoid sucking the sludge into the clean carboy. I topped off each carboy with a bottle of commercial dry Riesling from Anthony Road Winery (to keep consistency with Finger Lakes grapes). I managed to get the Titrets SO2 test kit to work. Well, sort of. I find it nearly impossible to suck individual drops of wine into t...

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...