Harvest and Crush

We harvested and crushed our merlots and syrahs; the cabs are not quite ready, and the zins are not even close. We expect rain starting tomorrow - a two day soaker, and another storm system 5 days from now. These are the numbers we got when we tested the must before adding sulfite. They are a little different than the numbers we got before harvest, but not too far off.

Brix 22.2
Specific gravity 1.1
pH 3.2
TA .81

The Brix and specific gravity don't seem to add up. Pam said something like"Well, we only paid 8 bucks for the hydrometer."

The must tasted really good...

Looks good! The acid doesn't seem nearly as high as you feared it would be. Are those numbers for the Merlot or Syrah? Keep us posted!

Hi Jim,
The harvest numbers look great!
Quite often when taking an SG reading when preparing one’s must, a slight amount of CO2 can be present, for this reason I always de-gas the sample. Sometimes a vigorous shaking will do, or I heat the sample and then let it cool, bring it back to its original volume (before heating) with distilled water and then take an SG reading.

Salute

Howie,

These numbers are for both. They seemed to be about even in development, and our crop is really small, so we mixed them. We only have 3.2 gallons of must, but we expect to get about 3 times that from the cabs and zins.

Still waiting on the BIG REDS.
Chard,Suav Blanc,Pinot have come threw..........so we are in idle.