obsessed with wine podcast with Wesley Cable Sr On the New York City Podcast Network

The Daily Taste: Thursday May 26th, 2022 – Wine Fermentation

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Yesterday we talked about receiving red wine grapes and color extraction today we are going to discuss preparing for fermentation Must is the name for the combination of skins and juice in a tank or barrel ready to be fermented To start the fermentation of both red and white wines the winemaker has two choices The first choice is to allow the wild yeast cells that are already present on the grapes and in the winery on the equipment to do the fermentation This is called a native fermentation or spontaneous fermentation Native fermentations can add dynamic flavor to wines but are unpredictable which some winemakers don t like They are unpredictable because winemakers don t know which strain of yeast are doing the fermenting there is no guarantee when the fermentation will start and the native yeast are not guaranteed to finish the ferment in a reasonable amount of time The second choice for winemakers is inoculating the must with a specific yeast strain that provides a more predictable fermentation When inoculating a must with yeast there is a special process called re-hydrating that must be done before the yeast can be added to the tank with the must If the yeast is added directly to the tank without re-hydration the change in temperature will shock and kill them Here are the typical steps of re-hydrating yeast prior to adding them to the must First you get a bucket and add water at 104 degrees and pour in the dry yeast At this time you can also add any yeast food that you want to add and allow the yeast to wake up Then a small amount of cold juice from the tank is added to the mixture The yeast starts to ferment the sugar in the inoculation sample as they wake up The winemaking team then waits 15-20 before measuring the temperature of the inoculation The goal is to get the inoculation temperature within 15 degrees of the temperature of must in the tank The wineries I worked in typically started inoculations when the tank must be at 55 degrees so our yeast mixture must be around 70 degrees for it to be safe to add to the tank The winemaking team will continue to add juice from the tank every 15 to 20 minutes until the yeast mixture has reached the desired temperature Then the yeast mixture is poured into the tank with the must and the tank is mixed to ensure an even mixture of yeast and must I will add some pictures to the show website of the yeast re-hydration so you can see what it looks like After the must has been inoculated the winemaking team keeps track of the progress of fermentation by taking a daily sample from the tank or barrel and testing the BRIX BRIX is basically the sugar level in the fermenting must This can be done using a hydrometer or a cool little machine called a DMA For dry wines the goal is to get the brix to as close to zero as possible The fermentation for red wines can be complete in just a few days while white wine ferments need to be done much slower I will put a picture of a DMA on the show website for you to see Tomorrow we will discuss the impact of temperature on fermentation of both white and red wines and we will discuss settling and racking Don t forget to go to the show website to see videos and pictures regarding today s topic Thank you very much for listening I apos ll see you tomorrow for another daily taste Cheers

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