Nicole,

I have a filter unit which takes sheet filter material about 20cm square and 4 layers.  The pump runs at about 1.6 gal/min.   What porosity material will I need for the carbon removal?   1u?  

 

We normally recommend a 1955 filter pad to remove carbon – which is a polish filter pad, approx. 0.5 microns. The Cellulo filter pads are manufactured at our plant in Fresno, and are cut to 20 cm x 20 cm, 40 x 40 or 60 x 60. Most wineries have a 40 x 40.

 

There is a picture of the Chromatograph at  http://camalie.com/WMreport03.htm  which shows that the M.L. fermentation was clearly done before racking to barrel.   I did not add any sulfite after the initial sulfiting at crush.  

 

This is a good idea, as any So2, free or total, may inhibit the ML bacteria.

 

 One of my philosophies is to use as little sulfite as possible.  With the high pH I understand that I probably should use more however, I am generally quite meticulous about cleanliness and we use stainless variable capacity tanks for fermentation that have been thoroughly sanitized.    At crush the pH was 3.45 and I added 23.7g/62 gal. which is .38 g/gal which should have introduced about 50ppm of free SO2.   Two days later, a day after inoculation, however, the pH had risen to 3.78.  on 11/3/03 after pressing, before M.L. the T.A was 3.77, 3.81 and 3.86 for the three sublots.  I haven't measured it since.  I probably should since the pH usually goes up after M.L.  If you could make pH and T.A.  and free SO2 measurements on the sample you have I would be happy to pay for them. 

 

No problem. I have been working with the bottle for a few days and it has been open, so I think that it is unlikely that the measurement of free So2 will be accurate. I have attached the molecular SO2 multiplier; multiply the free SO2 by the molecular SO2 multiplier for the pH of the wine. Red wines are (should be???) aged at 0.4 – 0.5 ppm molecular; a molecular SO2 of 0.4 ppm is supposed to inhibit the yeast Brettanomyces. Red wines are advised to be bottled at 0.6 ppm. White wines are aged at 0.6 ppm and bottled at 0.8 ppm. These recommendations are from Lisa Van de Water, who is the former owner of the wine lab, and is known as the “bad wine lady”.

 

The SO2 recommendations above are of course generic recommendations. For example, if the pH of your red wine is 3.85, you will need 45 ppm free SO2 to achieve a level of 0.4 ppm molecular (“aging”); a level of 0.6 ppm molecular (“bottling”) will be achieved by 68 ppm free So2. Both of these levels are much higher than most people are willing to add.

 

Nicole