Saturday, October 23, 2010

Let's MLF

I think both groups bought the same malolactic bacteria - Enoferm B - and I'm going to forge on here with that assumption.

The 2.5 g package of EB is good for 66 gallons of wine.  We have 21 gallons of Primitivo and 18 gallons of the Merlot / Cab / P. Verdot, so we can use a single package if we're going to work the two wines at the same time.

EB wants to be hydrated in 20 times it's own weight of 20 C chlorine-free water for not more than 15 minutes.  2.5 g package of EB, 50 g water, 50 g water = just a tad over 1/4 cup.  So, dump the packet in 1/4 C room temp distilled water and set the timer for 12 minutes.

We're also going to use Optimalo Plus as a nutrient for the malolactic bugs.  1 g per gallon, dissolved in just enough water or wine, and then added and stirred into the body of the wine prior to adding the malolactic bugs.  So, use a wine thief to draw off some wine from each vessel, weigh & add proper amount of Optimalo, swish-wait-dump-stir.  The Optimalo comes in 6 g packages, so for the 5 gallon carboys we can weigh out the 5 g or eyeball it - you're call.

By the time we've added all of the nutrients we should be ready to add the bugs.  Let's use a rule of 1 ml of hydrated bug juice per gallon of wine.  I'm basing this on our 1/4 cup = 2 oz = +59 ml for 66 gallons, round it off to 1 ml per gallon and round that to 5 ml per carboy = 1 tsp bug juice.  Jah?  So add 1 tsp bug juice to the 5 gallon carboys that already have nutrients added, stir, cap, relax.

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