Barrel treatment

Now, how did you know that?

Barolkleen (sp?) is a waste of money and good oak. I recommend strongly against _any_ preconditioning for even _American_ oak, much less European.

Soda ash is very alkaline. You don't want to get it on your hands - much less inside a barrel. It tends to break down the cellular structure of wood.

The first barrel I ever bought was a 30 liter Demptos. All I did to prepare it was fill it with water to make sure it didn't leak. I immediately emptied it and fermented Chardonnay in it. It came out _delicious_!

Now _that's_ the right idea! Nothing like a barrel fermentation to take the edges off a new barrel. The action of the yeast "fines" the harsher tannins, and they end up in the lees.

How full can the barrel be for a fermentation

About 75-80%. It depends a lot on the strain of yeast and the fermentation temperature. E.g., Prise de Mousse is very active; Côte de Blancs is slow and steady and foams very little.

You might consider putting a rubber stopper in the bunghole with a tube leading to a glass jug - sort of a burp tank. Then if it overflows you won't lose anything. Put a 2 hole stopper in the jug with a fermentation lock on the second hole.

Tom S

I'm not a purist (I've used recycled whiskey barrels) but your plans sound like a waste of good oak. I would have thought it would be a lot simpler to just shorten the length of the time you leave your wine in the barrel. I expect you'll find that the more you use the barrel, the longer you'll have to leave wine in it to get the same kick.

I understand the part about the burp tank, but wouldn't the two hole stopper defeat the reason for the airlock? or am I confusing how you plan on hooking it up......

email: dallyn_spam at yahoo dot com please respond in this NG so others can share your wisdom as well!

Um, hate to disagree with you, Tom, but soda ask is NOT all that alkaline, and in fact is so weak a base that it won't, to my experience or knowledge, break cell walls. That's why soda ash, unlike caustic soda (NaOH), won't work as a sanitizer.

A saturated soda ash solution comes in at under pH 11. Or it did when I measured it.

Dave

Yeah, you're confused. One hole is the inlet from the barrel; the other is for the fermentation lock.

Tom S

NaOH isn't exactly a sanitizer either, or isn't used for one anyway. Not that that means anything could _live_ in it.

I don't think you realize how caustic pH 11 is! That's 4 points over neutral, and remember it's a _log_ scale. If you were to immerse your hands in that stuff for 15 minutes or so you wouldn't like how they look and feel the next day.

But hey, it's your barrel and your $$$ you'll be pouring down the drain.

Tom S

Oops, sorry. It's _Brian's_ barrel and $$$!

Tom S

I dunno. I wouldn't let soda ash anywhere near my barrels, but I'm perfectly happy to put my hands in it. And do, on a not infrequent basis. I've never had a problem with it.

Do you have anythng like a literature source which confirms that a base at pH 11 would lyse a cell wall? My experience is it won't.

And FWIW, Bruce Zocklein's book specifically DOES recommend NaOH as a sanitizer, because it, and not soda ash, will break cell walls.

Dave

I'll bet you don't leave them in very long. You know that slippery feeling your hands get from doing that? It's caused by the alkaline medium saponifying the fatty esters in your skin. IOW it's turning you into _soap_!

No info on that, sorry.

I suspect that it all depends on the concentration, temperature and contact time. BTW, does he mention the distinction between sanitizers and sterilizers?

Tom S

Yep, familiar with the idea. But I don't find that it's either

a) that excessive a phenomenon, or b) that big a deal in any case.

Yep. Quoting fro mKen Fugelsang, who wrote that section of Zoecklein's book:

"Unlike sterilization where success is measured as 100% kill, sanitation is usually defined as reduction of viable cell number to acceptably low numbers . . ." p. 160

and

"Both NaOH and KOH have excellent detergent properties and are strongly antimicrobial; they are active against viable cells as well as spores and bacteriophage. . . .Sodium carbonate is an inexpensive, frequesntly used deteregent." p. 162

Both quotes are from Ken Fugelsang's 1997 _Wine Microbiology_.

Note that sodium carbonate is NOT listed as having any antimicrobial properties.

NaOH is not the best sanitizer, because it is so destructive to living tissue, but the problem is finding anything better. All chlorine-based snaitizers are out of the question given the problems Hanzell and Gallo have had with TCA winery-wide.

What else is there?

Dave

ahh.. okay.. makes much more sense now.. :)

email: dallyn_spam at yahoo dot com please respond in this NG so others can share your wisdom as well!

Ozone. The winery I'm working out of has a machine that they use for sanitizing barrels, tanks etc. Works great!

Tom S

Yeah. The winery I'm at looked seriously at that just before I started here, but ultimately rejected it. I'm not absolutely sure why, but I think it was a combination of cost (minor issue) and safety (major issue).

I've been using the chemical equivalent of Proxy Clean, a product sold by "Barrel Builders" out of Napa. It generates hydrogen peroxide when added to water, and certianly works to clean and bleach. Barrel Builders claims that it sanitizes as well, and for lack of a better alternative, I'm choosing to beleieve them. :-)

Dave

Just curious Dave, what is the safety concern?

snipped-for-privacy@lightlink.com

I don't know, since I wasn't around for the discussion, but I think, without knowing, that any exposure to ozone gas is harmful or fatal, depending on the cncentration and length of exposure.

Dave

Safety? In what way would it be unsafe? I've used it several times myself, and see no safety issues at all. The ozone concentration is below the level where you can smell it. The cost issue is another matter.

Tom S

Dunno. I wasn't around for the discussions, but my understanding was that the gas itself was harmful/toxic/fatal, and there was a non-trivial risk of exposure.

But that's a third hand discussion 2 years ago, so I could surely be wrong.

Dave

OK, I agree that I was upset, but I can move on and answer your post.

We have recently used soda ash to clean an old oak cuve (1000L capacity), which had developed a "penicillin" character. This was on the advice of a cooper, before I get fanged by the "purists"!

I can't tell you how strong it was, because in true winemaking style we just chucked a lot of soda ash into a 200L drum, filled it with warm water, then sprayed it into the cuve. We had to use three similar solutions, but eventually we had thoroughly cleaned the whole thing out, with no apparent damage to the wood. The penicillin character seems to have gone, and the thing smells clean. I can't tell you whether it would remove oak flavour, as the thing was a few years old before we'd started, and we mainly keep it for the aeration from oak maturation, rather than any flavour.

For the other discussion regarding sanitisation and soda ash, the latter is not regarded as a sanitiser by the wine industry, but neither is caustic. They are cleaning agents only, and are excellent at removing tartrates. For sanitisation we use Oxyper, which is sodium percarbonate - unfortunately this isn't so good at cleaning!

Cheers,

Andrew

Hey Andrew,

That's great to hear. I've been using sodium percarbonate as well, but don't have any literature to back up it's effectiveness as a sanitizer. Do you?

And I would have thought, and in fact do, that since NaOH is strong enough to break cell walls, it would serve nicely as a sanitizer. No? If not, why not?

Dave