Sterlisation

1. Boil enough water to flush the filter system twice through, set aside to cool. 2. Use a sanitizer solution (One-Step would be a good one) through the filter. 3. Flush the sanitizer with the boiled water from step one.

True sterility is pretty tough. You have to think about the bottles, the corks, everything. Most sterile filters aren't. If the filter is rated as to 'nominal' pore size, it's not, if it's rated in 'absolute', it can sterile filter. First make sure everything is very clean; trying to sterilize/sanitize anything that isn't clean to begin with is just asking for trouble.

All that said, assuming you want to reduce the chances of re- fermentation you can treat the bottles like you would if you were canning and rinse everything else that comes into contact with your wine with a 1% sulfite and ~ 1/2% acid solution. If you mix a strong sulfite solution but don't add some acid it's not effective, it just smells bad. 1 teaspoon of citric acid per quart should be fine. Any other acid will just make it stronger, so they are fine too. You could do that to the bottles too.

I can't guarantee this will work, I don't sterile filter. It's what I would do if I did though.

Joe

Suppliers have not heard of One Step will try for something similar after I research it.

Will 2 flushes with water get rid of the chemical totally?? Should I dump a few bottles of the first wine that comes through the filter??

Anton

Hi Joe

Yes filter is rated as absolute. Bottles are rated sterile straight from the factory. (until I cut the packaging open anyway). Same with the corks Thanks for the tip on sulfite and acid solution Have a little pump bottle washer so will probably wash them with this solution as I bottle Want to bottle a sweet shiraz (about 20g/l of sugar) Accidentally made one with a stuck ferment a couple of years ago and everybody raved about it. Bottled it unsterile but could not sleep at night waiting for friends to phone me and say bottles of wine were exploding!!!!! So this time fermented the wine dry. Will filter to get the turbidity down so it will pass through a sterile filter. Add the grape concentrate then sterile bottle it.

Anton

You don't need to sterilize. You only need to sanitize. One Step, Iodophor, and StarSan are all commonly used sanitizers for this purpose. StarSan tends to be preferred for a lot of people. Personally I like to use Iodophor for this like bottles because Iodophor stains and is cheaper than the others. You can't stain a bottle and since it's cheaper that's why I use it for things like that. For things that are porous and could stain, or for keeping a spray bottle of sanitizer on hand to spray tools or other things I like to use Star San. It is stable as a sanitizer in solution in a spray bottle for a longer period than Iodophor. I don't know much about One Step but the one time I used it I personally didn't care for it.

True sterilizing takes heat and pressure. I know folks that maintain cultures of yeast that sterilize their lab equipment for maintaining the yeast cultures but for everything else they only sanitize. They sterilize by using a pressure cooker for 20 minutes.

Regards, Scott

Good idea, you don't want to waste any of that capacity on the absolute filter; prefiltering a good filter is always good practice. If you want to store it after cleaning cheap 100 proof vodka may be the way to go.

Joe