Hi Jim (and everyone),

Quick note - saw your calc's and needed to correct:

> First addition.. 3 g/l Tartaric x 38.13 L = 114.13 g Tartaric

I'd added 3 g/GALLON, not liter. Sorry if my notes confused that
earlier.

Now, on to the main event... the ferment.

I wanted to fill you all in on the last 24 hours.

Yesterday evening, the wine dropped by S.G. .03 in just 15 hours! It
was time to press, so I drove by the local wine supply shop and snagged
one today.

I had a very enjoyable afternoon. A friend came over and helped operate
the press. I'd tried getting a hold of a few wooden palettes from a
Costco or grocery store, but came up empty-handed. So, I made use of
the spare 2x4's and 2x10's to construct my own press stand. It raises
the press about 10 inches off the ground, is very stable, and has an
open area for carboys and other collectors to fit below the press
spout. Of course, we made use of a funnel and carefully held the
carboys at an angle so as not to splash any of the wine.

I scooped small bucketfuls (about 1-quart each), one at a time, into
the bottom of the press basket, and allowed the free run to pour off.
We easily filled about 75% of the volume of the carboys without any
pressing. As the skins would pile up in four- or five-inch thick
sections I'd hand press them down before piling on more fresh scoops
from the fermentor. By the time we'd run through all of the wine, and
I'd carefully hand-pressed the skins, we'd filled more than 13 gallons'
worth into a 6.5- and a 7-gallon carboy, plus about 1/5 of a 5-gallon
carboy, for a total of about 14 gallons of free run.

It was really interesting to note how very little remained to press
using hand-cranked ratchet, but we went for it, and got another, oh, 2
gallons from that. I'd say the longest part of the process was building
the platform, sanitizing everything in the garage, arranging all the
objects with ample sanitized surfaces (and buckets) around us so we
could drop things if we needed to swap out a carboy, with a simple,
plastic beer pitcher to catch any of the free run that poured through
the funnel while one of us grabbed a new/empty carboy, etc. etc. The
actual pressing went fairly quickly.

I'd say there are now at least 17 gallons of wine amongs the three
carboys. The largest, the 6 and 6.5, actually hold closer to 6.5 and 7
gallons each, respectively, and the 5-gallon holds more like 5.5
gallons, so it's a little difficult to tell exactly how much is really
in them. Plus, there is the issue of the lees. Heavy, thick sediment at
the bottom of each carboy.

I'm going to let the carboys sit for a day or two and most likely rack
them into fresh ones off the lees. I am presuming the majority of the
settlement is gross lees, which I understand can make the wine go bad.
I'll know more when I see the carboys in the morning. The good news is
that the majority of the pomace stayed behind, and overall, the carboys
are quite clear already.

A few test samples to share...

ph 3.45
TA .8

This has improved quite a bit from immediately before the ferment. It
looks like this would be a good contender for MLF. If I am going to
rack off the gross lees, I'll do that first and then pitch the MLF.
However, I've read that the lees can provide some sustenance for the
MLF bacteria... Any thoughts on this?

Thanks,

David