Pressing

I feel your pain. Luckily I have two barrels in the house (basement) but the standing order here is - no dog in the house.

Neither?

I don;t think you'd want to ferment Cab in a barrel anyway. What about getting two or three large plastic fermentation buckets with lids? Will Mrs. Harris allow that?

Fermenting 5 small lots seems to me only to increase risks, and would be terribly inefficient from a time / work point of view.

Wayne, I ferment in 6 gallon pails and it is a bit of a pain. I drain off the free run and scoop out the cap into the press leaving most of the seeds behind. You really can't fill them over 4.5 gallons and mine hold 6.5 gallons technically.

Why not go the large trash barrel, clear plastic poly bag route others use? I don't know how many pounds you are talking but it sounds like close to a ton. It would be a lot less work and a lot less space. You might have only 3 55 gallon barrels to deal with rather than 25 buckets.

Joe

I was under the impression that large plastic trash barrels should not be used for Primary Fermentation. It that is the case, I am happy to run down to Lowes and pick a couple up, But most trash barrels are LDPE plastic, (not food grade) and I am worried about the must picking up smells.

you mentioned liners, i don't know what you mean by a a liner.

(I could sell a stackable "trash" can to the spouse. ;)

Go online to US Plastics. They sell a wide variety and sizes of HDPE containers that are excellent for fermentation. Ask them to mail you a catalog. I bet you will find other things (toys) that would come in handy for winemaking

They sell large plastic food grade inserts here for trash cans but I am talking about huge clear plastic bags; we called them body bags because they were 6 feet long... Industrial supply places sell them. They are pretty heavy grade plastic.

Joe

I *think* i know what you mean. We call them "contractor bags" hmmm,,, mental wheels are turning here....

I saw the food grade HDPE primaries on the morewine.com site, they are perfect. Its just that the shipping costs are outragous.

I'm really not sure what to do here. I've been thinking about this for about 6 months, and really, i'm still not any closer to a decision.

Its funny you know, I've found a way to make my rather talkitive wife clam up. Sometimes my wife will ask me over dinner; "You seem distracted honey, what's wrong?" then I'd say something like "the acidity in this batch is off, and I'm not sure what to do", or, I need to figure a way to press next falls grapes better" or I need a better process for monitoring MLF"

-End of conversation- ;-)

This really is one of those things that i do still ponder, and don't know exactly how i'm going to proceed.

Wayne, In fact, the HDPE Brute barrels at lowe's are indeed food grade. I noticed this when I saw the same barrel for sale in a catalog, and also at the local wine hobby store. I called brute myself and asked them. They assured me that the barrels at lowes are the same AND food grade. The trick is that the only ones that are food grade are gray, white and yellow ones (I believe). I have a gray one. I put a large spigot in the bottom. Marc

A food grade barrel will say so on the bottom somewhere. It's usually accompanied by the NSF logo (National Sanitation Foundation.) NSF is to food handling products as UL is to electrical. We chefs & bakers have long used Brutes for food storage. Your local restaurant supplier ought to carry food grade barrels in sizes from 10 gals. up to 55's. HTH. regards, bob.

Well, if you can go bigger and don't need a liner, all the better. You can keep more of the heat of fermentation in a bigger barrel and pull a little more color than using the 5's. We can buy used food grade barrels here. I would rather punch down 3 or 4 barrels than

Joe

Joe

Check out

They will also send you a print catalog. They have a LOT of HDPE products and a lot of different items. I have had good service with them and they ship VERY promptly. They have technical people that can handle your questions and tell you exactly which products are suitable for making wine if you should have any questions. The print catalog also lists the specs for each product.

I could do without the religious stuff they send with the order though.

This is a related thread that closes the deal for me.

I can sell plastic stackable open-top primary fermentation barrel to the spouse. ( i can tuck these away in the off-season)

I still have an oak barrel restriction for our basement, and thus, have a growing glass carboy collection.

Thanks much to all that responded.