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What’s New at ENOTOOLS

News, straight talk and the occasional rant from Joe Lutomske, since 2009.

Still Using Lugs?

Make It Easy to Make Better Wine and Why Some Augers Are JUNK!!!

Still Using Lugs?


By bringing in grapes in lugs, you can have a bit of control over what gets dumped on the sorting table, into the destemmer, or into the press.

In the case of a destemmer, you need to supply a constant, metered feed of fruit to be able to dial in that perfect speed on the destemmer control.
Dumping directly from lugs, you go from empty to choked to perfect to empty again every time you reach for a lug.

If you pick lugs and dump them into 1/2 ton bins in the field, you can utilize this hopper to feed whatever the fruit goes into next.

Uses for this hopper:

1. Whole cluster- straight to the press, or sorted into another bin for dumping and feeding to press.

2. Grapes to be destemmed (crush optional). Destem into bins to feed into the press or into the fermentor. Or ferment in the bins.

3. Fermented reds into the press by way of dumping bins into the press.

And if you are a crush and pump facility, you needed this a long time ago.

Why the Carlsen Horizontal Receiving Hopper is better:

1. Height Adjustable
2. Has the correct type of auger so it's gentle and efficient.

Still Using Lugs?
A good auger like this one from Carlsen has adequate diameter, smooth welds, a one- piece, floating shaft to gently move grapes.
Still Using Lugs?
A poorly designed auger is undersized, overgeared (notice the high- speed whip of the bunches as they blur) and is as inefficient as it is violent.
3. Fabrication is a thing best done by wine industry- specific companies like Carlsen.

4. Speed adjusts from 0-25 tons per hour to cater to your throughput.

5. Made in the USA

Contact Us today for a quote.

TCA Free Corks on a Budget?

This Is Our 100% TCA-Free Guaranteed Micro-Agglomerated Cork. It's A Natural, Agglomerated, Microgranule Closure at a Budget Price.

TCA Free Corks on a Budget?TCA Free Xpür

  • Humidified, printed and coated in Napa, CA
  • Half the extraction force of a synthetic
  • 70% Natural cork
  • Flavor neutral
  • Perfect for 1-3 years in the bottle.
  • For fast, automatic bottling lines & manual corking alike.


Why a Waukesha?

Why a Waukesha?
A Waukesha-type Carlsen W130 Positive Displacement Pump Rotor

There's Only One Waukesha-Type Carlsen

What you see here is the heart of the Waukesha-type Carlsen pump head. This piece is unique in its design and fit. This rotor is one of two inside a head machined to within just a few thousandths of making contact. Used world wide in practically every industry, a Waukesha is the household name for wine.

The Waukesha-type Carlsen pump is self- priming, very strong, and super gentle.

Contact us today for a quote.

Are You Overpaying for Screw Caps?

Price Them Here.

We have all of the basic colors you need at competitive prices shipping straight from Napa!
Are You Overpaying for Screw Caps?
Wine Bottle Screw Caps- Saranex Liner
Are You Overpaying for Screw Caps?
Wine Bottle Screw Caps- Tin Liner
Custom screw cap colors and decorations available.

Contact us with your colors and quantities in hand!

Why You Need a REAL Pressure Washer

Sanitation Is the Name. Being Clean First Is the Game.

Sometimes the terms "cleaning" and "sanitizing" are used interchangeably. When folks are being more careful or concise they utilize the words seperatly and specifically.

It has to be clean before it can be sanitary. What should be the first tool in your winery sanitation arsenal? A commercial grade, powerful, heavy duty, durable, easy to use, industrial strength pressure washer.

A real pressure washer needs to see 5 gallons per minute (GPM) of incoming water- bare minimum! It's output pressure can be anywhere from 2600- 3200 pounds per square inch (PSI). And one cool feature would be if it had the ability to run normally with water as hot as 180 degrees F. Now we can have super- efficient, on- demand hot water heaters feeding our heavy duty pressure washer to get stuff really clean. We are doing our whole facility a favor by heating water that way, anyhow.

What kind of stuff can we clean you ask? Sure: Crushpads, bins, tank rooms, walls, tanks, barrels, trucks, etc., etc., etc.

Fun fact: All of the good barrel / small tank cleaning heads out there need 4.5 GPM at 2600 PSI to operate. Its the same with the walk - around floor scrubbers.

May I suggest a good pressure washer? We can supply one that heats its own water or one that utilizes your water. Either one works well cold.
Contact US for more information.

Choosing a Screw Cap Supplier

Don't Get So Busy That You Cannot Shop Around to See Your Options on Screw Caps.

Choosing a Screw Cap Supplier
Being too busy to switch can happen with any product or service we use.

With screw caps, the perceived level of difficulty of finding, pricing, and testing a manufacturer is so unpleasant that you avoid switching for all but the worst reasons. We respect that you use who you use because you like your brand. But if you are not completely happy and are not shopping because it seems so difficult to switch, you might be missing out.

What is your reason for buying Stelvin? Surely, the name itself inspires confidence. There is a notion that they set the standard. And sometimes, a brand name becomes a noun when a customer describes their closures. It's funny how we like to do that in our language. Sometimes the manufacturer just shrugs and lets it happen. Not true in this case; Not yet.

Some examples of when a brand becomes a noun: Do you remember when there was no digital printer (I don't)? I'm told that you had to create an original and then copy it. If you waited long enough, you could fax it over a phone line. That was cutting edge! Was Xerox the only way to make a copy back in the day? Is an iPhone the only smart phone today? Is a Coke the only soft drink? Do you need a Kleenex, Band Aid, or Aspirin? Are you Googling this?

There are several ways to source screw caps. What you need is a cap with consistent quality and a more competitive price.

I promise to make it completely worth your while to request a quote and try to learn more about our screw cap manufacturer. You can email me here.

While we still have time!!!!


Corklins. Another Natural Way to Enhance Wine.

If you grasp the synergistic relationship between barrels and wine, you won't be surprised to find out that the cork lends phenols to the wine and is preserved by the wine as well- just like a barrel! The fairly recent discovery of compounds known as corklins has shed some light on an unanticipated benefit of using a traditional, one- piece natural cork.

The wine keeps relative humidity in the neck of a bottle high enough to preserve a cork. During the time which this cork is responsible for keeping the wine, it is also minimizing astringency and preserving the color with corklins.

This article by The Drinks Business' Patrick Schmitt called Compounds called Corklins found in cork-stoppered wines features Dr. Miguel Cabral from Amorim and is actually quite interesting.

The AMAZING Neutrocorks

The AMAZING Neutrocorks

What You Need to Know About Neutrocorks:



ENOTOOLS sells a closure designed and manufactured at Amorim to stave off oxygen ingress, remain flavor neutral, utilize smaller pieces of closure- grade material, and give the consumer a "real" cork experience.

Meet the Neutrocorks. They truly are amazing. Not in the sense of, "Those shoes look amazing", or, "That coffee was amazing". I mean truly a marvel of closure science and technology in manufacturing that you can afford, and can't afford not to use.

At a cost of pennies each for the Standard Neutrocork, and just a few pennies more for 100% INDIVIDUALLY TESTED and GUARANTEED Xpür, the argument against all other types of closures is suddenly heated.

With all of the information out there about them, plastic closures are quite simply, in my (not sure if I can say) humble opinion, a ridiculous choice. That idea can't even stand up to the pressure it takes to get them out of the bottle. And then consider price. They should be free because of the cost to your reputation.

We all like the convenience of a screw cap. But if that isn't enough to justify the hassle of changing bottles, changing bottling equipment, changing your level of concern for ecology, and investing the time it takes to implement the changes, you still have an option. It's called a Neutrocork.

Neutrocorks are made from smaller (yet no less of a gift from Mother Nature) particles left over from the manufacturing of traditional, one- piece natural corks. This material was already closure grade and a small piece of the 29% net from the harvest which makes the cut at Amorim. Have you ever wondered where cork floor, cork insulation, cork gaskets, cork clothing and apparel come from? It was cork that wasn't good enough to be in a beverage.

Neutrocorks work surprisingly well, being 70% cork. See below where it proves very competitive against a screw cap, synthetic, or a higher percentage of plastic product from a competitor; All at a lower cost.
The particles in the Neutrocork have been treated four ways to eliminate absorbable TCA and VOC's in general. That process is called ROSA. And here is an additional step. With the use of high pressure, high temperature, and peroxide, you can imagine that the particles have already been subjected to a scenario that your wine cannot emulate.

Apparently, the peroxide works.
The AMAZING Neutrocorks
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0045653596001002
The combined ingredients in the Neutrocork equate to about 70% natural cork and 30% food- grade polymer. They are manufactured in a unit- molded process and baked at a temperature which allows them to retain elasticity. I have seen this very impressive process at Amorim in Portugal. The particles are not being cut open after being mixed with the polymer. They are happy little kernels of treated cork laminated together into a shape made for your wines.

Quality Control is Amorim's #1 concern. And the two types of Neutrocorks are no exception. Each Standard Neutrocork lot is sampled and tested nine times between the bark and the bag.

Each, INDIVIDUAL Premium Neutrocork is tested with unitized gas spectrometers at Amorim as an overlapping layer of testing for the next level of quality. Folks, we are talking about eliminating that last 0.01% of doubt here. This is important. It means that Amorim's process was already so good that the investment in the equipment and subsequently, risking the added costs of reprocessing substandard product are still worth it to them. These are not expensive closures to begin with. Paying a few cents more for peace of mind is a good decision for some.

A lucky few from each lot of both Standard and Premium Neutrocorks are welcomed to America with a free reception at ETS Labs. There's coffee, donuts and TCA testing.

The extraction force required to remove this closure is one half what is required to remove a traditional synthetic. It's probably harder to get your wallet out of your wife's purse. Their coating is proprietary and specific to the Neutrocork. It provides higher static friction and lower dynamic friction than a standard (Paraffin/Teflon) coating would. They stay in and you can get them out.

There are currently HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of these being used a year around the globe. And there are still plenty to go around. No, seriously. Use all you want. We'll make more!

Please contact us for more information. It's worth a call.

Joe Lutomske
Problem Solver
ENOTOOLS.COM
phone
[email protected]

Finance That New Equipment

Utilize Section 179 and Let the Machines Pay for Themselves.

Finance that New Equipment
Top Reasons to borrow to pay for machines:
-Hedge against inflation down the road
-Keep your liquid cash in place while allowing machines to pay for themselves.
-Section 179 deduction on full price (see IRS limits) and depreciation.

Some people are resistant to the process because it is easier to do nothing and work those extra hours with extra hands than it is to sift through the endless possibilities and worry over the numbers.

If you finance the things your business needs to thrive and grow all at once, you can improve your process, your quality, your user experience, and your labor costs in one fell swoop.

We are trying to make it easier for you to make better wine in less time.

Click the button below to see how much you can invest into your process within 24hrs.