Auxerrois Harvest Day 2

On the day after our harvest (Vintage 2023: Auxerrois Harvest), we went back to our industrial space to get some clarified juice to take some numbers. The harvest fit into two 30 gallon plastic bins. Bin 1 contained the first press and Bin 2 contained the second press.

It was a good thing that we went to check on our settling juice because the clarified juice in Bin 2 was beginning to smell a little like nail polish. My husband had the foresight to check our newly purchased bag of potassium metabisulfite. He did not react to the bag with the usual backing away of the head when smelling a pungent odor that assaults the nostrils. He became a little suspicious and touched the white material and was able to do so without any ill effects. He then realized that the bag of potassium metabisulfite for all intents and purposes was no longer active, if it ever was. Fortunately, my husband had a year old bag of potassium metabisulfite which was still good so we were able to put 25 ppm into our clarified juice.
We did bring home samples from both bins to check the Brix, pH and TA.
Here are the results:

Variety	Sample Date	Brix	pH	TA
Auxerrois - Barrel 1	October 2, 2023	18.8	3.36	6.5 g/L
Auxerrois - Barrel 2	October 2, 2023	18.2	3.55	5.1 g/L

On October 3, we went to check on the Auxerrois juice with the intention of moving the juice into their fermentation kegs. We used gravity flow by putting the pallet with our blue bins on the fork lift and raising it above the receiving kegs. We elected to put the juice from Bin 2 (the second pressing) at the bottom of each of the three kegs and then topped it off with the juice from Bin 1. We also choose to bring over some of the settled, heavier pulp from the must when we did the transfer to serve as nutrients for the yeast. It took about 45 minutes to do the transfer.

Next we rehydrated our yeast, QA23. From the days of fermenting small lots we have used the proportion 1 gram of yeast for every gallon of must. We estimated that we had 40 gallons of must so we rehydrated 40 grams of QA23 with water at 100 ^oF.
We don't add any food when rehydrating the yeast. Our strategy is to try to mimic the conditions that the rehydrated yeast will multiply under. We have been doing this method for all of the wines that we have fermented.
Hydration took approximately 30 minutes and after that, we tempered the hydrated yeast with 125 mL of must, every 10 minutes. We put a total of 375 mL of must into the yeast and measured the temperature after each addition. Our must was at 68 ^oF, we we were shooting for a temperature close to that for the rehyrated and tempered yeast. At the end of this procedure, we pitched the yeast into the three kegs and labeled it 1, 2, and 3. The air-lock was placed on each of the kegs and a silent prayer was said for each of the kegs.
When we went to check on the yeasts on October 5, keg 1 was undergoing fermentation based on the bubbling from the airlock. This morning, Kegs 2 and 3 were also showing bubbling from the airlock! Prayer answered!