The Crush...Day 1

Got the grapes today. The plan was Monday, but plans go awry.

Things went smoothly when I crushed the reds. 20 minutes and I was done. Moved the inside, added some potassium metabisulfate and pectic enzyme. I'll let them sit till Friday, then add the yeast, and all should go well. I'll get to the testing in a minute

The Chard...that wine and I are going to butt heads, I know it. Started pressing at 6:30, 2 cases into the press (doing a whole cluster press to see how it turns out), then adding one case at a time as they juice runs out. I ended up being able to press 6 cases into the space of one 6 gallon primary. Got 16-17 gallons of juice, so I'm happy.

But, it took me 3 hours to get that juice. When I went to test it, well it didn't go as planned. I used the test kit with the blue liquid and test tube. I couldn't add enough blue stuff for the juice to change color. Lovely. Tried the litmus strips....chartreuse isn't on the chart.

I tested the red and they seem a little low on acid. I'm going to test everything tomorrow with a clear head.

till then...