Cold stabilization at 37F - Useful or waste of time???

If you're making red wine you are wasting your time trying to cold stabilize it because it really isn't necessary. If you are making white wine you need to get it ~10°F colder than that.

Tom S

One way to get your carboy cold enough is to pretend you're making ice cream... use table salt or rock salt in the ice to depress the melting temperature.

You can accomplish this by standing the airlocked carboy up off the bottom inside a larger container (like a 33 gallon plastic garbage can). Fill with ice up to the lower portion of the neck, layering the salt as you add the ice (1 pound of salt for every 10 pounds of ice should get you down to 27-28 degF (the ice-salt solution will be closer to

Cover the top of the ice/salt layer with bubble wrap, and insulate the outside of the garbage can as well as practical.

You'll want to periodically drain (or siphon) off just enough of the salt-water solution to 'de-float' the ice, and replace with more ice and salt in the 1# salt to 10# ice ratio. The liquid enhances the heat transfer from the wine into the salt-ice mixture, so don't drain it all off.

Unless you like cooking wine, I'm sure you'll keep the salt and salty water outta the wine. :)

Gene

Um, reasonable people may disagree about both of those things.

It can be very useful to cold stabilize reds just to drop out acid (and if you're athe right pH, lower your pH). Think of it as a poor person's ion exchange--you get to substitute hydrogen ions (which you want) for potassium ions (which you don't).

And cold stabilizing whites at 37 is fine. I base that both on my practice, which produces wines which don't throw tartrates in the bottle, and on Fritz Neradt and Otto Rein's article on cold stabilization (AJEV, 30:4, 1979, pp. 265-271). THey claim, and it seems to be right, that you should cold stabilize your wines at the coldest temperature you expect them to expereince. 37 is probably a little high--you should aim at the temperature of your fridge.

Dave

Jack suggests at least two weeks. And he gives other useful info about cold stabilizing using salted ice on his site (what a guy).

Lum suggests one to two weeks (another gem).

So, as in all things, YMMV.

Gene

Marty Phee wrote:

Google ate my post, but it's similar to David's thinking. I cold stabilize reds to remove tartrate crystals and balance acids. I like softer reds, and I seem to go a little lower in TA each year. Right now it seems like my dry reds are too tart if at 6g/l or above, I shoot for the low 5's.

If you want to get the fridge colder you may be able to. I have 60's vintage fridge that had a chill chest top, all I did was pull the door off the chill chest and it gets to 25 F.

You may be able to fool with the thermostat calibration too. Pull the knob off and see if there is a screw inside the shaft, that is how most mechanical thermostats are fine tuned.

You could replace it with a lower temp one also; Johnstone Supply is national and has thermostats that go pretty low.

Joe

I am making an apple wine so your post is definitely encouraging. I noticed a white crusty ring starting to form at the lees / wine interface at the bottom of the carboy this evening after only 2 days of soaking. I assume that's the tartrate cystals?

BTW, I did check the temp on my frig and a neighbors fridge and found the temp range to be 41F-43F. I also did a little internet research and found this to be a good average so maybe it will not be a waste of time. I suppose I'll let it continue. Can't hurt, right???

Thanks, Charles

I bet this would work like a charm but sounds like a lot of effort. I'm currently alternating and re-freezing small plastic bottles of water instead of using bagged ice just to make it easier and cheaper. Unfortunately, my method doesn't get me down to 27F. I'm hoping 37F will be cold enough based on other posts. Thanks for the help!

Take Care, Charles

If cold stabilization is easy for you (and it sounds like you have a small batch that fits easily in the fridge, so that's a good candidate), and a little acid reduction is what you would like for your wine, then there's nothing wrong with cold stabilizing, and you'll prevent "unseemly" acid crystals from developing on the bottom of the bottles (for those who find those bothersome).

But, I wouldn't hold out hopes for significant acid reductions with cold stabilization. Compared to other methods of acid reduction, cold stabilization is relatively ineffective from my experience, and if it involved lugging full carboys around to get them outside, my advice is to skip it. Plus, in a white wine, the acid reduction might not be desirable (although this is probably going to happen eventually anyways in the bottle).

Jon [Check out my winemaking homepage