Auxerrois Next Steps After Harvest

Our Auxerrois Harvest occurred on Monday, September 23, 2019. We took our grapes to a nearby winery to have the grapes pressed and the juice was put into a stainless steel barrel modified to be temperature controllable. The barrel was wrapped with a cooling snake and then with insulated for the initial cold settling step.

The next steps occurred yesterday, September 25, 2019. After cold settling, the juice was gravity racked from the one barrel into another. Our protocol is to take over some of the settled larger particulate matter to be the "food" for the growing yeast.

The winemaker guessed that we might have about 50 gallons of juice. When the transfer of the juice was made, what was left in the barrel was about 1/2 gallon of sluggy stuff which we decided to pitch. All in all, we thought that was a good recovery of juice.
The next steps were to take an aliquot of the juice with which to temper the yeast. For our yeast, we are using QA23. Since the estimate of juice was approximately 50 gallons, 50 grams of yeast was rehydrated in 500 mL of water at 110 degrees.
During the initial step when the yeast was being rehydrated, the winemaker took the Auxerrois juice and put it into a graduated cylinder to measure the sugar content with a hydrometer. We have never had enough juice to do this so it was a new experience!
The hydrometer, with the temperature corrected reading was 19.6 Brix. At the same time, the pH was measured and it was 3.26. The winemaker also took the titratable acid reading ant that turned out to be 7.35 g/L.
So the numbers for our 2019 Auxerrois juice are:

Variety	Weight	Volume of Juice	Brix	pH	TA
Auxerrois	636 pounds	50 gallons	19.6	3.26	7.35 g/L

The rehydrated, tempered yeast was put into the barrel at 2:32 p.m.! We took some of the juice home with us and also measured the level of sulfur dioxide in the initial fermentation and the number was 29 ppm, which is a nice reading to begin fermentation. Crossing our fingers.