Oak Barrel vs. Plastic Speidel - An epic challenge!

[crushday]

Tomorrow I will start a test to compare the development of Cabernet Franc aged in a 2nd season 56L French Oak barrel and Cabernet Franc aged in a 60L Speidel plastic tank with four French Oak medium toast WineStix. Both wines are from the same ferment. Because of the size of barrel, I expect the test to take 6-7 months to complete.

Here are some notes from the ferment started September 4th, 2021:

0.5 ton of fresh grapes from Clos du Lac (Loomis, CA)
pH 4.11 (TA added)
Watered back to 23.5 Brix (acidulated water)
Two yeast strategy (Prelude pitched to start, Avante to finish)
MLB: Ch16 added on day three of the ferment
Pressed on 9/16 (fermentation normal in all aspects)

Both the barrel and Speidel will have 100% varietal Cabernet Franc. I will be topping up monthly and checking Free SO2 and pH bimonthly using a Sentia wine analyzer (SO2) and Vinmetrica SC-300 (pH) and reporting the differences both in topping volume, pH, free SO2 and amount of K-Meta added throughout. And, I'll be providing aroma and tasting notes on both wines.

What else should I be monitoring?

 

[CDrew]

Am watching this thread. Looking forward to updates.

 

[winemaker81]

Your test list sounds good. This is an interesting experiment!

I suggest you have guest taste testers who taste blind.

 

[BarrelMonkey]

I suggest you have guest taste testers who taste blind.

Double blind...

(@crushday, thanks for running this comparison - sounds interesting!)

 

[patrikthehun]

Daniel Pambianchi did a comparative study on the evolution of wine aged for 12 months in a flextank vs. a two-year-old oak Barrel earlier this year.

You can read it here : 12-Month Progress Report on My Comparative Study on the Evolution of Wine Aged in a Flextank vs. a Second-Year Oak Barrel | Techniques in Home Winemaking

You might have read it already, if not, it's a great study.

 

[Nebbiolo020]

I am eager to hear back on how this goes, I don’t use barrels, preferring to stick with aging my wine in stainless tanks with oak cubes I find that it provides as good results as a barrel and takes up less space and I have less to worry about.

I usually add a full dose of cubes during fermentation and then during aging and leave the wine alone.

 

[Chuck Rairdan]

Following. Started using Speidels this year for the micro oxygenation effect, will be curious to hear what you find out...

 

[balatonwine]

What else should I be monitoring?

You should control for variance and bias.

First, it would be good to know your experience with each of your treatments (oak barrels versus Speidel barrels). As more or less experience with one or the other may affect results.

Second, you only have a single treatment of each type. One barrel of each. Having no randomized replicates, you have not controlled for variance. Thus, like it or not, your results will be biased. In a way that will be unknown. Thus the results, whatever they are, can not be extrapolated to any other oak or plastic barrels, they will only be about your results from your two barrels.

Third, blind tastings of the results will remove bias of where the samples come from, but your blind tasters should be randomly selected from a broad population. The reason is that selecting "people you know" may mean they all like one type of wine, but the different treatments create different types of wine (not bad wine, simply different). Thus if the tasters all are biased to start, the results will be biased. One must sample also from a broad spectrum of tasters.

In short.... Since it is unlikely all of the above will be meet, this is not an "epic" event. It will be no doubt a fun, entertaining and probably very enjoyable topic. But not "epic". And the results really can not be applied to one barrel type or another in general*.

* Yes, there is a little science in the show, each and every evening.

 

[Chuck Rairdan]

Still possible to do blind testing. Just have someone else draw the samples.

 

[winemaker81]

@crushday, assuming you have enough wine, add 2 more samples -- a carboy with no oak and a carboy with 2.5 oz medium toast French oak cubes (or equivalent in whatever you want). Make the oak equivalent to what is in the Speidel.

Still possible to do blind testing. Just have someone else draw the samples.

Do a double-blind. I draw the samples and randomly label them A, B, C, and D. You re-order them and place labels 1, 2, 3, and 4 over mine. No one know which is which until after the tasting completes.

Sure, the unoaked carboy will stand out, but it will be a control vs. the others.

 

[crushday]

Because the world wants to know!

Initial tasting notes to follow:

Here’s the numbers on the two wines (both racked to respective containers December 12, 2021):

15 gallon barrel: pH 3.78, free SO2 17.4
15.9 gallon Speidel: pH 3.73, free SO2 18.9

I added enough SO2 to get to about 50 - I just don’t know how much will bind and what will register as free. Any help in this regard would be helpful.

Here’s a couple shots of the test screen on the Sentia:

Barrel




Speidel



BTW - I love how simple the Sentia is and how fast I get the free SO2 reading. It literally takes less than 1 minute. Amazing…

 

[CDrew]

That Sentia is some nice bling. What exactly does it read from the strips? I need to read up.

 

[crushday]

That Sentia is some nice bling. What exactly does it read from the strips? I need to read up.

Drew, right how it only reads free SO2 - which candidly would be enough for me. I H8, H8, H8 checking for free SO2 using my other “kit”. All that glass, stir plate, beakers, reactants…. What a chore. I literally have a full day added back using this little unit.

To answer your bigger question…. The device is ready to read other aspects of wine making: pH, TA, etc…. New strips will be introduced in 2022 for those other things. I cannot wait…

 

[crushday]

You should control for variance and bias.

First, it would be good to know your experience with each of your treatments (oak barrels versus Speidel barrels). As more or less experience with one or the other may affect results.

Second, you only have a single treatment of each type. One barrel of each. Having no randomized replicates, you have not controlled for variance. Thus, like it or not, your results will be biased. In a way that will be unknown. Thus the results, whatever they are, can not be extrapolated to any other oak or plastic barrels, they will only be about your results from your two barrels.

Third, blind tastings of the results will remove bias of where the samples come from, but your blind tasters should be randomly selected from a broad population. The reason is that selecting "people you know" may mean they all like one type of wine, but the different treatments create different types of wine (not bad wine, simply different). Thus if the tasters all are biased to start, the results will be biased. One must sample also from a broad spectrum of tasters.

In short.... Since it is unlikely all of the above will be meet, this is not an "epic" event. It will be no doubt a fun, entertaining and probably very enjoyable topic. But not "epic". And the results really can not be applied to one barrel type or another in general*.

* Yes, there is a little science in the show, each and every evening.

Balatonwine, thanks for the very thoughtful occurencia. You make some really great points. I can appreciate your definition of “epic” is markedly different from mine mostly considering I make wine in my garage and lack the means and desire to add all the layers of comparison you espouse.

My tasters will come from the pool of my relationships. My ilk is derived from profoundly experienced winemakers to casual drinkers. I will be posting the collective responses.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading about the results.

 

[Yew]

Malic Acid testing available at the end of this month on Sentia