REROLLED.BOIL

Daybreak and I find fermentation following forward. With nighttime temperatures under fifty (in August?), the humidifier has kept the tank a happy seventy two. However, I need to ensure the yeasts ferment completely.
Once the bubbling (and my coffee) are finished, I sample the must.

Thus far, the yeasts have neared the same specific gravity as water: 1.000. But to finish the job, they need oxygen and redistribution throughout the must. No air or nutrients means dead yeasts. Also the bubbling CO2 they produce will not go away without degassing the must. So I re-sterilize the secondary carboy, let dry and then siphon.

Even thinking about the bag of skins turns my stomach. Any extraction that could have happened via fermentation is probably over. Also, the carboy's neck is two inches in diameter. The bag is six. So I trash the skins.

Along the way, we taste the must. Surprisingly, it is not poison. It seems almost palatable even fruity, and the sweetness is nearly gone. One niggle though: it is thin. The body and tannin are there enough, but the alcohol is lacking. Without a chemist lab I cannot check the proof. But it tastes under 10% of alcohol by volume.

Time to cheat.

What went into the morning coffee gets dissolved into a test tube with some must and nutrient. Hopefully, the yeasts are still kicking around. Rebooting fermentation with cane sugar will give me more alcohol than before. Where it takes the flavor is unknown.

The next day finds resurrected yeasts churning away at the sugar. If any bacteria join in, we are done for. Yet everything smells clean enough.

Only time will tell.

SEVEN.SLEEPERS

Seven in the morning. I stumble out of bed. Tubs and tubes litter the living room and dining table. I glance at the airlock. No popping or gurgling. No heady scents of bread and fruit. Dead yeasts have sat at the bottom of a fermenter caked in oxyclean for two days.

I pop the lid, hesitant to see what bacterial outbreak has occurred. Yet, behold!

Life! HA! HA! Take that trying to do something! Something did it all on its own!

A worry persists however. Not starting the yeasts immediately allows other bacteria to join in. They can add off flavors. I have no idea what nasties might be breeding in there. To avoid wasting time with a bad batch, I will taste the must later.

For now, let the yeast cells work their slightly gross-looking magic. In addition to making alcohol out of sugar, the yeasts draw out color, tannins and further flavors from the skins. Although it looks like a liver-after-auspices, I leave in the sack of skins. This leaches out more, well, blueberryness.

To encourage my late-bloomers, I hop over to my local zymurgist (of course I have one). Back home, my yeast fine dine on Fermax Yeast Nutrient. Although grapes and blueberries have similar nutrients, I doubt my recent oxyclean debacle has left much food for the yeast feast.
Unlike Trimalcio's never-ending dinner, my yeasts eat quickly. Not enough distracting entertainments, orgies or sugars probably. I stir the must to re-oxygenate them. Without oxygen, yeasts will go to sleep.

More curious than brave, I taste the must. It is surprisingly fine. The yeasts and nutrient are there, but blueberry notes dominate. The body is medium, tannins low, acidity medium, CO2 fizz persists and sweetness still hangs around.
So I check the hydrometer in the (far more science-tastic than a wine bottle) test tube. We have crept to 1.020 S.G. Once it gets to 1.000 the yeasts will starve and sink to their grave.I check the forcast. A cold front is moving in for the night. This worries me. If the temperature drops near 59 degrees Fahrenheit, the yeast will slow down or die.

We have no thermostat with central heating. So I treat my patient with a humidifier and blanket.Welcome back yeasties!

RUSHING.REVENGE

Our old apartment returns to wine friendly temperatures (middle seventies Fahrenheit). So I pack the kids into the back seat, and we carefully crawl over speed bumps home. I only yell at them once for splashing each other. Once they reclaim their place as living room decoration, we seem ready for fermentation. I quickly clean the equipment. However, the must is only a few inches deep, while the hydrometer is 10 inches long: too long to check the specific gravity (relative density, brix) of the sugar to liquid.

I rack some must into a sterile wine bottle that will fit the hydrometer.
The specific gravity sits at 1.030 brix. This means that the potential alcohol will end up at around measly 4% of volume. You might recall my Barbarescowelches started at 1.080 brix giving it almost 11% potential alcohol by volume. Blueberries have only 65% of the sugars that grapes contain. So I cheat. Not interested in blueberry beer, I stir in some dissolved organic cane sugar (maybe a cup, or two or three). If smart, I would recheck the specific gravity to determine the potential alcohol. But I am far too impatient to waste time being smart. It is time to ferment.

Internet wisdom claims Montrachet yeast from Red Star is the weapon of choice. Developed by UC Davis in 1963, yeast strain 522 can turn sugar into alcohol until it reaches 13% or dips outside of 59 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit. It can even survive small amounts of sulfur dioxide (in case I get cleaning crazy). Other strains of yeast are tougher, but my fruit is not concentrated enough in flavor or body to cover up more than 13% alcohol on the palate. Balance is the goal. Well, at least drink-ability would be nice. So, as before, I add my single-celled militia of millions to a cup of warm water and wait. Nothing. One hour then two pass by. I get angry and dump the yeast into the must, cap it, air lock it and go to bed.

With morning light I check the tank. Eerie silence. No gurgling air lock like last time. I crack the lid. Nothing.

Maybe it is too cold. The yeast packet may be a dud. Maybe it was the change in location. What if red is the new black? Maybe blueberries lack the sugar or nutrients to restart yeast.

I look for life. A white film runs to a blue patch on the otherwise burgundy juice and skin bag. Not good. In my mad dash to clean and re-rack, I did not rinse out the "rinsing is not necessary with one step" oxyclean. The yeasts may never wake up. Billy Mays's revenge is at hand.

FERMENTATION PERSUASION

Yeast added. Lid shut. Airlock, well, locked. I wait. Austen's Anne Elliot knows how I feel: suffering quietly alone, waiting upon your sugars to become alcohol takes the patience of a truly goodwilled and kind nature. Yeasts, like most gentlemen, are at best conversely inattentive and then later overambitious in character. They must be treated with the ever lightest of attentions, even if one's bloom has vanished early with a rapid increase of the crow's foot about the eye, one might still indulge in the hope of exciting their esteem, thus someday garnering a place amidst their large fortune and...DAY 2: I wake and find the temperature up two degrees. Cracking the lid unveils a foam of Carbon Dioxide from the yeast on the surface. The hydrometer shows the sugars are down 0.004. So I begin the daily stir, giving the yeasts air to breathe. The foam separates and swirls like Jupiter's surface.

Two more days find the yeast cruising through the grape sugars, with the hydrometer bobbing its approval at 1.032 Brix. The apartment smells brilliantly.

The wife takes a turn letting the yeasts breathe.

Once lidded, the airlock pops and bubbles the CO2 safely out of the tank, not letting anything else in. Too much oxygen contact and the wine turns to vinegar or worse breeds invading bacteria.Day 4: A churning thick cap of burping yeasts has formed and Mr. Hydrometer tells me the end is near: 1.020 S.G. I give the wine a heavy last stir and take time to upload more photos.

The fifth day wakes me to a quiet airlock. A layer of lazy froth gets stirred away and the hydrometer dips to 0.999. Secondary Fermentation show time!

FOMENTING FERMENTATION

After a week of work and wait, I prepared for the first fermentation. Step 1: clean like crazy. After a heavy wash of all the equipment, I mixed water and sulphite powder. After fearfully reading and rereading the packet, I stuffed my nose and covered my eyes. Gloves would have been nice, but lacking a biohazard suit I cleaned carefully.
After a fervent rinsing/not bursting into flames, I left the equipment out to dry. Impatient, I poured over the instructions. The translation from Quebecios French was shaky but I had bigger worries.
The linger of sulfur sent me back to the bathtub.With equipment drying again, I lined up the usual chemical suspects.
First to go in, Bentonite, the clay of kitty litter fame.The single page of instructions wouldn't assure me why I wanted cat-tasting wine, so wikipedia came in handy. Supposedly, Bentonite has cleaning and bonding qualities perfect for drawing out unwanted proteins and haziness. However, my instructions asked for "2 litres of warm water". That's a lot of water for 23 litres of wine. So I checked the French, and behold, "500 ml (2 tasses) d'eau tiède".
Once the litter was stirred to near-lumplessness, I grabbed my bag o must and dumped it in. Welches and berry scents wafted into the air but luckily not onto the carpet.
Next came the hydrometer to test the specific gravity/sugar content/brix of the must. Packlab did their job, balancing mother nature to a near perfect 1.080. This is a big deal because the sugar in grapes will become alcohol. Not enough sugar means hungry yeast. Hungry yeast means no alcohol. Which means no wine, just yeasty, kitty-litter-y grape juice.
Next up: bread-making.
Adding yeast is cheating and sacrosanct to some winemakers, who believe in letting the naturally occurring yeasts in the grape skins to turn the sugars into alcohol. Yet most add Mr. Pasteur's genius stroke without blinking (and occasionally forget to filter them later).
So I added yeast to warm water (from, well, my coffee maker). While waiting for them to wake, Alton Brown will catch you up on these guys. My dehydrated yeast fungi zombies from Champagne should thus be resurrected with a little wet warmth. They may not absolve my sins, but once reborn will turn sweet into heat.So I set the timer and went back to staring at the yeast. Nothing. Maybe now? No. Ten minutes later? Nope. But then...thanks entirely to my mind meld...

IT'S ALIVE!!! The air became heady and bready. After stirring it vigorously into the grape must, I clamped the airtight lid onto the food safe trash can, accidentally jammed the grommet into the juice with the airlock and then proceeded to ignore the problem by tasting the leftover juice:

Appearance: clear, ruby, medium intense color
Nose: clean condition, medium intense aroma, grape juice and red apple notes
Palate: high sweetness, low acidity, light body, light tannin, forward blueberry preserves, blackberries, medium length, quality...um juice?

Now the five day wait begins!