We’ll be doing some cleaning and equipment maintenance before we bring our hopper, fruit elevator, destemmer-crusher, and must pump from the warehouse to the crush pad. Then, we’ll get that equipment cleaned and ready. We have a bit of wine in the tanks that we’ll be moving into tanks just big enough to accommodate each batch so we have a maximum amount of tank space available for new juice. We’ll clean up the labeler and bottling line and put it to bed for a few weeks.
We also send samples of fruit up to Iowa State University for YAN (yeast assimilable nitrogen) measurements. The yeast that we use to ferment the wine need a certain amount of nitrogen in order to complete fermentations and while we add yeast nutrients at the beginning and in the middle of each fermentation, we have to be careful to add enough but not too much nitrogen in order to keep the yeast happy. Knowing how much YAN comes in from the vineyard is an important part of the equation.
