Fermentation Bins Arrive

For those who are following along...today my Oregon State bro brought up our Macrobin brand harvest/fermentation bins from McMinnville, OR. It just happened to be good luck that he wanted to come up to Washington and play golf with some of his co-workers and myself (his employer is headquartered in Puyallup). And I told him that I was planning on going down south to pick up the bins and he offered to bring them up here. Excellent timing!

Here is a pix...


So these plastic bins are an inexpensive piece of equipment to harvest and transport our grapes. They are also a great way to open-top ferment small batches of red wine grapes...hell you could do white wine as well in these bins and sure shit I probably will. But the benefit is that you can easily manage the skins cap and work in small batches. Temperature control is tricky, but with our Northwest cool climate in the fall, it really is not that big of a problem.

Once fermentation is in play, I will cover the top of the bins lightly with some cheesecloth to let the CO2 gas to escape, but keep large air born debris form falling in.

That's it!!! We are on our way to harvest and crush next. Stay tuned.