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9/25/2018: 12 Gallons Juice pH: 3.5; SG: 1.085; General Notes: Made from "California Select" Gewurztraminer juice bucket purchased from Musto in Hartford. Two six gallon buckets ($52 a piece) combined into 14 gallon Chapman fermenter. Added 20g Opti-white the night before pitching yeast. Added 2 Oz Med toast French oak dust the night before pitching yeast. Rehydrated yeast using Go-Ferm Protect and pitched on 9/24/2018 at 8PM. Must was 15C at pitch. Added 9g of Fermaid-O at the end of lag phase on the morning of 9/25/2018. Ferment started rolling on the evening of 9/25/2018. 9/25/2018: Ferment going slow and steady. Temp is 16.4C. Fermenter is in water bath with fan on. 9/26/2018: Temp up to 19C. Ambient rose to 80F today, with high humidity. 9/27/2018: 20.1C. Ambient temp and humidity dropped earlier today. Dosed with second Fermaid-O treatment (9g). 9/28/2018: 17.9C. Ambient temp drop really helping. 9/30/2018: Temp at 16.8C. Lots of fruit flies making me nervous -- fermenter is sealed and venting into a pail filled with star san. They must be feasting on the spills...Ya. That's it. It's the spills that they're eating. 10/2/2018: Transferred from primary into two 6 Gal carboys. Got ~ 11.6 gallons. Topped up with some of the Pinot Grigio. I forget which one is the blend :-/ Shouldn't matter a whole lot. Sulphited night before to 30ppm. Measured pH at 3.37. Bubbling like crazy in its new home. 10/10/2018: Fermentation really slowing down. Few bubbles visible. Going to sur lie this bitch. Not going to note every stir -- suffice to say that the plan is to stir every Saturday until mid January, at which point I'll fine, stabilize, and back sweeten. Planning to go to bottle early March. Also planning to add a little tartaric acid -- maybe drop the pH into the 3.2 - 3.3 range if it's not there already. 10/28/2018: Stirred the lees again. Early taste test is good. 11/11/2018: Stirred the lees. Added 300ppm Lysozyme -- don't want to get a MLF starting. 11/24/2018: Stirred the lees. Flavor is really good. No off smells (No Sulfur, skunk, mercaptan etc). Six weeks to go... 12/15/2018: Added 1/4 tsp K Meta per 6 gallons. Should be enough to hold it over through January. No more Lees stirring until New years. 1/6/2019: Racked off the lees, added 1/4 tsp KMeta per 6 gallons, and brought to shed for cold crashing. Tasted excellent -- I may not backsweeten the entire batch because it's excellent as is. Low temp of 15 tonight. Cold crash should be done at end of week -- I think it's already done from just spending the last month in the cold cellar (Temps ranging from 40 - 55 F). I noticed a lot od wine diamonds in the sediment. 1/25/19: Hit it with Polycacel (1.1 g/l). Took readings: 3.44 pH. 30ppm SO2. Going to need to raise the SO2 at next racking. 1/27/19: Fined with Albumex bentonite (1.1 g/l). Going to let it sit 1-2 weeks and then hit it with SO2 and rack off the lees. Maybe add just a bit of tartaric acid. 3/1/2019: Finally racked it off the lees and hit it with 30ppm KMeta. Good amount of sediment left behind. The bit that was pulled over in the racking really clouded it back up. It went from mostly clear to nearly opaque. Hoping that it resettles over the next month. Topped up and sitting pretty. Going to just let it sit until bottling. 5/18/2019: Racked and Sulfited with 1/4 tsp per carboy. Getting close to bottling time. Hit it with a dose of K Sorbate as well (4g per 6 gallons). Getting ready to backsweeten and bottle. 5/26/2019: No more sediment forming. Wine is clear, but doesn't pass the "flashlight test". Hit it with a teaspoon of pectic enzyme per six gallons. Hoping that clears up the last little bit of haze. If not...I'm not sure I'm going to worry about it a lot. It's pretty minimal and you only notice it through a flashlight in the carboy. Samples in the glass are brilliantly clear when held up to the sunlight. 6/17/2019: Adventures in clearing continue. Hit it with Kielsolsol and Chitosan (the following day). Let's see how this turns out... 7/1/2019: Well...there's about 3/8 inch of sediment on the bottom. Wine is pretty clear, but I can still easily see the flashlight beam when shone through the carboy. I'll give it another couple weeks and then just give up and bottle this thing. 7/20/2019: Cleared pretty well. I think I'm being too critical with the flashlight test. Racked off the sediment and added 1/4 tsp of KMeta. Going to let it sit for a week or three and bottle this baby up. Accidentally sucked up some sediment and clouded up one of the carboys. I think it'll be fine after a few days. There's a super light layer of dust on the bottom of the carboy already (~ 24 hours after the 'incident'). Tested the pH. Got a reading of 3.4. Tastes a touch flabby. Added 20g of tartaric acid to the cloudy carboy (The one in the front). Gonna let it settle and taste it later tonight. If it's good, I'll apply the same to the other one. If I went too far, I can blend the two carboys together at bottling time. I went with a conservative approach and used 1g/l. 7/21/2019: Dosed the second carboy with 1g/l of tartaric, since it really made the first one pop. 8/2/2019: Bottling day! pH is 3.2, final gravity is .997 (Sweetened up to .997 from .991). Tastes excellent! I'm really happy with this one. Going to pinch a few young, but it should really be kicking ass by Thanksgiving. It's a touch over Sulfited, but that'll mellow out after bottling/aging (This is a nitpick, and it's really young at this point. I'm super happy with the way it came out). Looks clear in the glass and in the bottle. I was definitely worrying too much about the clarity on this one.