Secondary fermentation!!! After a week + a few days, we "racked" the wine... meaning, we transferred it to a fresh container.
This removes the wine from the primary yeast sediment, to avoid "off-qualities", and to assist with clarification.
It was fun! We transferred the wine, and we tasted it. It tastes like real wine! Young wine...but real...and with potential! And since it's still fermenting...it was a little bit fizzy-like! It's going to be fun to document the differences from step-to-step.
I took science class-upon-science-class through high school and into college...and until now, I TOTALLY didn't connect with it. This science experiment is 1000% interesting and applicable to MY interests! See, with a little exploration, we can all be technical! Yay!
So moving on...we decided to wait about 10-ish days until the next step...#3, which focuses on stabilization and clarification, but will not include moving the wine. Can't wait to see how the Cab is after these 10 days! The anticipation is lovely.
Again, if you have winery names to suggest, please do! We need ideas! More soon...
(Written August 21, 2010)
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-Pic 1: Our Cab after the first transfer!
-Pic 2: The residual sludginess (I guess that's a word!) left in the bucket after the first transfer.
FORGOT TO MENTION! We tasted it after Step 2! It tasted like wine (on it's way to becoming wine!). It was slightly effervescent, because there was still carbon dioxide in there. Also, it tasted young, obviously. :o) New post soon, we already completed step 3, so I'm just writing now!
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