Fall asleep on against the window pane

Worked a 17 hour day, left the winery at midnight and came back before 7am.  Everyone is a little slow and bleary eyed today.  I see sluggish steps everywhere and most everyone has had to repeat himself several times for their own benefit.  Thankfully no fruit came in today, but we had to press yesterday's fruit and inoculate what came in last Thursday.  Pressing is the domain of the cellar but inoculation is all lab baby.  

First T and I start by re-hydrating yeast nutrient in super hot water.  The stuff is a fine powder that gets everywhere and never seems to settle.  Then we weigh out some dippin' dots (actually freeze dried yeast):

We add the yeast to the hot water/nutrient solution and wait 20 minutes.

After which time the yeast become active and begin to grow.  The solution gets frothy and fluffy and delicious.  The lab smells like a bakery, which to us is what signals the beginning of harvest.  At this point the yeast is around 100F and the juice we wish to inoculate is at 50F.  T and I have to slowly add cold juice to the yeast buckets to get the temperature difference down from 50F to around 18F.  This can take a long time because if you cool it down too quickly you can kill the sensitive yeast.  Usually it can take half an hour, but today it took us over an hour because we are sleep deprived.

When the mixture is at the right temperature we head to the cave to pitch the yeast to the barrels. And then its massive clean up time.  Half of what we do is cleaning up after ourselves not because we are particularly messy but because everything we do causes a sticky mess.  

And sanitation is key.

Meanwhile in the cellar . . . . 

Intern K swallowed some tartaric water and upchucked all over the cave.  

"No one told me not to swallow while siphoning."

We are going to miss him very much, but we're not sure if he'll miss us.

Elsewhere in the cellar . . . 

RowBear learned that if you've shoveled out one tank, you've shoveled them all.  Also, he learned that it's really unpleasant to shovel out a tank.

And side note:

Today this is a truck driver in front of the winery was doing his best goat impersonation: 

Ok. 7pm.  Only a 12 hours day today. Time to go home.

Today's Tunes: While rearing the yeast we listened to Outkast covers.  Thanks Matt Weddle and The Vines.  Yes it's only 2, and yes we listened to them on repeat.  On repeat.

Up Next: More Intern K.  Only 3 days left!

-T & L