Wine Barrel Cleaning and Care
Wine barrel cleaning is a chore that has many avenues of approach; But one destination. You want the barrel as close to sanitary as possible. This is a three step process.
To guarantee healthy barrels after use, you need to do three things:
1. Clean it.
2. Sanitize it.
3. Either refill it or treat it.
Before a wine barrel can be sanitized for re- use or treated for storage, it has to be clean.
The risks that you run from a microbial standpoint alone when putting good wine into questionable barrels are many. Barrel care is more than keeping the wine within safe parameters during use. This is not going to protect you from an existing infection in a barrel that is not clean. Dirty barrels can contain skins, sediment, tartrates, dead or living (but shielded by solids) microbes, etc.
Sanitizing wood can be extremely challenging. Cleaning it is easy. And wood is never sanitary. The best you can do is to knock down the population of existing bacteria or prevent the propagation of new bacteria. You must also preserve the wood if the barrel is going to sit empty.
We recommend cleaning your barrels one of two ways:
1. Barrel Washing Head like the Aaquatools Aaquablaster 360 and Aaquablaster LT. Push water with a 4.5 GPM minimum, 2600 + PSI pressure washer like our sturdy KEW Poseidon 7. with hot or cold water (hot preferred) …then sanitize. Then preserve or refill.
2. Steam generator, 3-5 minutes at 40psi, melts tartrates, open wood pores, release old wine. Cool rinse after....then sanitize. Then preserve or refill.
3. We hate it- But some folks do not try to remove tartrates, etc. and simply rely on chemicals to get the barrel clean. Chemicals do not mechanically clean the wood. But they do help strip good flavors.
We recommend sanitizing your barrels one of three ways:
•Ozone rinse/sanitize, after hot water rinse, 3 minutes…
•Sodium Percarbonate soak (24-72 hours) and Citric acid rinse
•Acid/SO2 soak, “pickling”:
3 Lbs. Tartaric acid --- about pH 2.2
½ Lb. KMBS --- about 500 ppm SO2
Mix in hot water in 60 gallon barrel, topped & bunged, 5 to 10 days
PRESERVE Your Barrel- Treat it or refill it.
Two ways treat barrels for empty storage:
1. Burn a sulfur wick every 30 days.
-or-
2.. Use EBX Barrel Protect to keep that barrel safe for up to three months; Sulfur free.
Spray Ball and Wand $250- $300 (Basic)
- Low Pressure, High flow
- No pressure washer required
- Pump- driven
- Hot or cold water (Hot is most effective)
- Can draw from a tank with a chemical mix
- Also good for Ozone or proxi- clean sanitizing.
- Slower , less effective means of cleaning. Relies more on hot water and contact time.
Aaquablaster 360 or LT $2900.00 (very, very good solution)
Click to See Video
- Pressure washer driven
- Hot or cold
- 180 degree F hot water tolerant
- 2500- 3600 PSI, Over 4 GPM preferred.
- Absolutely blasts the dirt off the barrel. Cleans in 3-5 minutes.
- Works great with On- Demand/ Tankless Water Heaters
Wine Barrel Sanitizing
Inside the used wine barrel, there reside a host of microbes. Some of these are good. But there is strong chance that you are reading this because you are aware of Brett, etc. And are possibly looking for a solution for your problem. Please keep in mind that you will not ever completely remove any and all bacteria, etc. from the porous wood of a wine barrel. It is simply impossible to bring a barrel to zero in terms of microbes.
ENOTOOLS is not here to convince you that this or that in limited strength is NOT a flaw. And we are not going to try to say that some imperfection is not stylistic or part of the overall complexity of a wine. But there is a difference between a small beauty mark placed by an angel which perfectly punctuates already pleasing features on a person and some sort of major cosmetic affront.
What you can do is sanitize an already clean barrel in hopes to control the population of what lives in the barrel that may harm the nose of your wine during it's next fill. Remember, beauty is in the eye, nose, and mouth of the beholder.
The four ways to make potential flaw- inducers feel very unwelcome (Sanitize) are:
1. Steam - as a cleaner and/ or sanitizer
2. Ozone- after cleaning.
3. Chemicals- least desireable way to clean and sanitize at the same time.
4. Oenological Tannin Spray which is Bacteriostatic.
1. Steam: The best steam generator for your money in our fair industry is the one we offer.
2. The best source for Ozone in the free world is us!
3. Use the chemical of your choice; i.e.: Proxi Clean, etc.
4. The use of the EBX Barrel Protect System
ENOTOOLS is not here to convince you that this or that in limited strength is NOT a flaw. And we are not going to try to say that some imperfection is not stylistic or part of the overall complexity of a wine. But there is a difference between a small beauty mark placed by an angel which perfectly punctuates already pleasing features on a person and some sort of major cosmetic affront.
What you can do is sanitize an already clean barrel in hopes to control the population of what lives in the barrel that may harm the nose of your wine during it's next fill. Remember, beauty is in the eye, nose, and mouth of the beholder.
The four ways to make potential flaw- inducers feel very unwelcome (Sanitize) are:
1. Steam - as a cleaner and/ or sanitizer
2. Ozone- after cleaning.
3. Chemicals- least desireable way to clean and sanitize at the same time.
4. Oenological Tannin Spray which is Bacteriostatic.
1. Steam: The best steam generator for your money in our fair industry is the one we offer.
2. The best source for Ozone in the free world is us!
3. Use the chemical of your choice; i.e.: Proxi Clean, etc.
4. The use of the EBX Barrel Protect System