barrels and topping up

For a barrel that small, weekly should be the minimum.

I top and taste my 228 liter barrels every two or three weeks. AFAIC, three weeks is pushing it a bit. I've seen some barrels (_not_ mine!) around the winery that have been so long between toppings that the heads are visibly concave. I think that's pushing it _way_ too far.

Tom S

Tom,

For your 228L barrrel, what would you give as an estimate for the total amount of "top-up wine" added over the course of barrel ageing? I'm curious what a typical "concentration factor" is for wines, especially reds, aged in barrels.

Thanks, Aaron

I've a 228 litre and ~50 litre barrel... I am usually down in the cellar weekly to check things, and top up if need be, though my cellar is pretty cold, losses aren't as quick as they might be for some place that is in a warmer climate.

I would be on top of this especially with small barrels. It is amazing how much "disappears" with all these fillings. I have several 5 &

10gal barrels where I blend and let age wine in. I top up every week and you can in some 10g barrels see as much as 150 - 200ml be used. This varies from barrel to barrel and how old they are. I usually select the wine with which to use for this at the outset so that I have some control of the finished product and this way I have "written off" these top-of wines at the outset and don't feel the pain when you see them disappear down the hole.

I would like to hear from others how they would deal with any vinegar flies. I have one small barrel that seems to constantly be damp just around the edge of the bunghole. The airlock shows constant pressure and the wine taste fine. I check it daily, kill any vinegar flies if I see any, wipe any moister up and have been spraying the area with sulphur

I put in a pestomat and am switching the frequency weekly, but they seem to still to appear just at this bunghole. I also keep a flytrap right over it and I can see evidence of the small fly.

So if anyone of you have any suggestions I would be glad to hear them.

SG Brix

I recently heard bandied about the number 7%. That was over the course of about a year and a half, and it sounds reasonable to me. It's sort of hard to estimate this accurately, since I always taste - sometimes with one or more others "help", and occasionally pull a sample out for "evaluation" purposes. :^)

Tom S

Why not wet a washcloth with sulfite solution, wring out most of the sulfite and wrap it around the bung and the bottom of the airlock? I doubt that they'd care to hang around that.

Tom S

Thanks Tom, but I have been wetting down a papertowel each time and leaving it. Maybe I just should make a stronger solution. I just get crazy whenever I see one of these critters.

SG Brix

I just sprinkle a little sulfite powder around the bung. The powder seems to keep the flies away for a week or two. I wipe and blow the powder off before pulling the bung.

And another question. If you have to top up every week or so with 100 to 200 ml of wine, where does that top up wine come from? How do you store variable volumes of wine for topping up? You can't take 100 ml from a carbouy. Do you bottle wine prematurely? I suppose you could top up with commercial wine and drink the remainder. What do you do?

Getting a barrel next year.

Dan

I have 50 L barrels as well (probably from the same place as Steve) and top them up weekly (or every second week on occasion). Right now I have three vintages in various stages in the "winery"; 2001 were bottled 3-4 months ago and are not labeled, 2002 are in carboy for blending and 2003 are in barrel. For topping up I use a similar wine from the 2001 bottles.

My barrel room is relatively warm (low to mid 60's) so weekly topping off is important. As a reply to an earlier post, I have estimated that over the course of a year I add back about 10L or 20% of the volume of a barrel. Usually I have two wines go through a barrel, so this represents about a 10% concentration for each wine. Tim

: > I have several small barrels (around 50Litres) and have been in the habit of : > topping them up weekly. My reading suggest that some people do this more or : > less frequently or possibly not at all.... any comments? : >

: > steve : : And another question. If you have to top up every week or so with 100 : to 200 ml of wine, where does that top up wine come from? How do you : store variable volumes of wine for topping up? You can't take 100 ml : from a carbouy. Do you bottle wine prematurely? I suppose you could : top up with commercial wine and drink the remainder. What do you do? : : Getting a barrel next year. : : Dan

Steve, Dan and All,

Barrels exchange roughly 2 ml of oxygen (O2) per liter of wine per year. So, a 50 liter barrel exchanges 2 X 50 = 100 ml of O2 per year. Or, 100 / 52 ~ 2 ml O2 per week. Air contains about 20 ml of O2 per 100 ml. So leaving 100 ml of head space in a small barrel just about doubles the oxygen input.

100 ml is a pretty small head space, so I'm not sure that topping small barrels once a week is necessarily a good thing. But, maybe may arithmetic is wrong????

lum

Lum,

I haven't actually measured, but the top up of my headspace in my 60 liter barrels is more like a half bottle or even more every 2 weeks. There is no leaking and the bung is on tightly.

Glen Duff

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Lum wrote:

Wow! That sounds like a _lot_ of evaporative loss to me. I probably lose about the same volume over the same length of time from a barrel almost 4 times the size.

I'd guess that your losses are that high because the staves are thinner in your barrel than they are in my 228 liter export barrels, which are an inch thick. Either that, or you recently filled a new barrel and it's still soaking up wine.

Tom S

No, but you _can_ break down a carboy to gallon jugs, liter bottles and smaller sizes. Also, when tasting and topping, pull out a sample such that your topping wine volume is a bit smaller than the headspace, pour in the topping wine, top off from the sample you just pulled and use the remainder for tasting. No leftovers that way!

Tom S

I've found it effective to use 1 and 2 litre pop bottles... I'll top off, and squeeze the bottle until there is no airspace left. This has worked well for me.

Either that, or you recently filled a new barrel and it's still

How long can that process go on for? Can the amount that needs to be soaked up be expressed as a percentage of barrel volume? I'm just wondering how much I will lose to soak-in on my 30 liter barrel.

Brian

I don't really know, but IIRC Lum gave a figure like 4 gallons for a 60 gallon barrel.

You also should consider that depending on temperature variations in the winery the amount of topping wine required may vary from zero to at least twice "normal".

Tom S

You really can't quote a percentage of volume. You might be able to get a percentage of surface area of the barrel, which is quite different. For an exercise I did some calculations assuming that a barrel was a cylinder twice as high as wide. For a cylinder 50cm in circumference and 100cm high I came up with a surface to volume figure of 1:10 I then halved the measurements (1/8th the volume) and got a figure of 1:5 Altering ratios made quite a difference as well so unless you do the geometry better than I did you can't calculate it just like this.

Tom,

Just checked my barrels and the 60 liter barrel containing Chardonnay sur lie needed just about exactly a half bottle and according to my records it was last filled about 2 weeks ago. The barrel is a Hungarian (European Oak) burgundy squat styled and is about 1 1/2 years old. I measured the staves and they are either 7/8" or a full 1".

I too am surprised at the loss although I expect smaller barrels will lose proportionately more just on the basis of a higher surface/volume ratio.

I am going to start recording the date and volume of top-up of both my white and red barrels.

Cheers,

Glen Duff

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Tom S wrote: