champagneinhand
Posts: 10281
Joined: 5/30/2011
From: Upstate New York, California born.
Status: offline
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I have a couple of questions, being that I am new to the home wine-making? When I purchased malolactic conversion enzyme it cost $10.98 for such a tiny package. That seemed rather steep to me, but I purchased anyway. Secondly, does anyone have experience using the liquid oak as compared to the oak chips? I boiled my oak chips( heavy toast) to get them primed and used them during primary fermentation and again during malolactic fermentation, both done in a 6 gallon bucket designed for fermentation. My wine has been racked a total of 3 times because there is a lot of sedimentation on the reds for sure. Lastly, I was curious about how you clean your equipment. Hot soap and water work great for the buckets, bungs and airlocks, but I don't like using much soap at all with the carboys, since they are so hard to access the inside and be rid of any remaining soap particles. I favor scrubbing the outside of the carboy with hot soaped water, but when it comes to the interior, I rinse twice with scalding water, drain, then re-rinse with 1L of boiling water mixed with 1/2 cup of 10% hydrogen peroxide solution. After that has has been rinsed twice with hot water, I pour in almost 1 gallon of water that has been boiled with the equivalent of 1 crushed campden(PotMo). I don't rinse the carboy with this mixture at such a high temp, but after its cooled a bit. Finally one more rinse with hot tap water.
I know it sounds really, really anal retentive, but from my experience with cleaning a still's inside, any residual soap or any residue can lead to microbial growth, simply because it takes a good amount of time to clear all the humidity/ residual water because of the tiny openings and large capacity interiors. Anyway I am having such a good time with this, I have put in a request to get 3 gallons of late harvest Riesling from the finger lakes. While semi pricey at $25 per gallon, I figure that since it won't be harvested until the week after Thanksgiving, the high brix amber juice should be well worth the price. Any suggestions on which specific yeast strain to use on a high brix sticky, such as this? We have had several nights with temps outside dropping below 25F, so the sugar levels will almost be nearing that of an Ice wine, sans that neat texture. They don't harvest the grapes for ice wine until the last week of January and press at around 33F, but the grapes have to have been frozen solid prior. Those are some pricey gallons of juice, nearing $125. Out of my adult chemistry set price range, considering the likelihoods of botching the first try.
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RE: Warning: Don't Try this at Home - 
Months and months can continue to generate CO2. I discovered this when I first made some country Cherry wine that some became champagne style after bottling. None popped on their own, but I've opened most of them near a sink. I had even added a yeast kill agent, pottasium sorbate, at bottling since I sugared back, but still yeasty things lived to eat. 
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