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Selection International - Australian Shiraz kit - Day 1

The kit is assembled into the primary fermenter and bunged up with an airlock. This is my first kit that came with oak "chips." More like sawdust they are. Four packets came with the kit with instructions to mix in all four at this initial stage. Two were labeled as "toasted oak." Hmmm, looks more like grinding off the inside of a barrel to collect the nearly charred stuff and then digging deeper to get to the chips. Else that sounds like grousing, I'm happy to follow the instructions to the end -- I really intended that to be tongue-in-cheek. Let's see, I slapped the lid on 30 minutes ago... time to go check and see if it started bubbling yet.

Reply to
Casey Wilson
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Dude we're doing almost the same kit at the same time. I think I'm a week or ten days ahead of you, I just racked mine into the carboy tonight. I'm doing the Selection "Limited Edition" South African Shiraz kit. What was your starting SG? I was at 1.092. The oak chips will sink to the bottom of the pail soon. By day three or four it will be really fizzing up a storm.

Reply to
Alan Smithee

The SG was 1.086 at 77 degrees(F). Can't find my temperature correction chart so I'm not sure what the exact number is.

Cheers,

Casey

Reply to
Casey Wilson

As a point of reference, toasted oak should be darker looking, heavy toast borders on black where medium looks a reddish brown. I like my chips to be close in size and color of the toast. I really don't care for the 'sawdust' style chips, I think they give the wine too woody a taste. I never use untoasted, it's awful.

That said, Syrah loves oak. I am making my first kit, it came with some pretty mediocre looking chips but I used them anyway. (I make most of my wine from juice or grapes, this is an experiement.) Joe

Reply to
Joe Sallustio

That's pretty low for an Australian Shiraz... curious how it'll turn out.

Pp

Reply to
pp

Correcting the specific gravity reading for the temperature of the must, the reading is 1.090. According to the generic instructions provided with the kit, the target range is 1.080 to 1.1. At the moment the fermentation seems to be going quite well. This day three and the two-part airlock is constantly active. The fermenter is, unfortunately, opaque but from the looks of the debris collecting in the airlock tube where it is plugged into the bung, and considering 2-gallon ullage over the must, them yeasty critters have been having a wild party in there. For what it's worth, I'm glad I used the two-part airlock this time. It think the foaming might well have blown the liquid out of the S-shaped one piece gadget. It did just that on my first kit, a batch of Golden Zinfandel.

Cheers,

Casey

Reply to
Casey Wilson

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