Racking and sanitation.

[wineview]

Do any of you re-sanitize your hoses and auto syphon if racking more than one carboy?

 

[dralarms]

Actually a quick rinse with tap water and run a bit of kmeta through it is all I do.

 

[Scooter68]

Depends on if you are a gambling person or not. If that first racked wine contains any bacteria, there is a risk of infecting the next wine racked.
That might sound unlikely but for the minute or two of time that it takes to rinse and re-sanitize I'd do it.
Of course there is also the potential of color taint if the first wine is a red and the next is a white. Sounds like a captain obvious thing but people surprise me all the time.

Sanitizing solution is cheap and for a one or two minute delay - You might just use the delay to confirm what you are doing - adding K-Meta or Fining Agents etc.

 

[FTC Wines]

I don’t sanitize between carboys. Rack only Reds, or whites at a time. Never thought about bacteria in one carboy going into another. But don’t think I’ll change my system. Roy

 

[Scooter68]

The thing is that basic sanitation steps are only an issue if you make them so.

It takes just a couple of minutes to clean a vessel or siphon tube and racking cane. If you practice good sanitation practices the chance of a bacteria in your wine is very low BUT why take the chance?
Given the mistakes that are reported here (Folks asking for help because the skipped a step, left something out etc) encouraging sound practices just makes good sense.
Even some of the more experienced members on this board from time to time fess up to a mistake that potentially could ruin a batch of wine. So why not stick to sound practices?

The various steps exist for a reason and skipping them is just a gamble that seems silly to me. Given the amount of money and time folks invest in wine kits, juice buckets, picking and prepping wine grapes and fruit it all seems to suggest that one would want to keep to good, safe practices rather than cut corners and risk batches of wine to save a couple of minutes.

I could understand perhaps if you have a large batch split between two or more 5 gallon, 6 gallon or larger containers but beyond that....

 

[Johnd]

I’ll be racking 10 carboys into a 60 gallon barrel with my autosiphon. It’ll get one good cleaning and sanitizing at the onset, but not between carboys unless it hits the floor or otherwise touches something unclean.

 

[G259]

If I'm doing multiple tasks, on similar wines, I might go for a 'hottest water cleanse'. Vastly different wines are another story, my k-meta bottle is squirting everything!

 

[sour_grapes]

I don't mean sanitation, sanitizing etc. I wanna know that chemically what will happen to process if somebody does not change the container (fermenting vessel)?
Use the same vessel for 2nd fermentation that was used in 1st fermentation.
I mean that not strain the wine (must).
Is this process possible or not? If so, chemically what will happen to fermentation process?

I think I am beginning to see your question.

After the initial stages of fermentation, there will be a lot of organic junk left. We call these "gross lees." They include grapeskins, bits of fruit, and lots of yeast. If you do not remove the wine from this junk, it can break down and make the wine smell bad. Thus, it is alway recommended to remove the wine from this junk, and put it into a new vessel when the fermentation is nearly finished.

 

[G259]

Yes, get it off of the junk, good advice. I was also thinking that you were talking about reusing containers (that had been emptied). You could, but it would be a 'crap shoot' (gamble), why risk it, when sanitizing it is relatively easy.

 

[Scooter68]

AND when you have racked those new wines into another container and left the gross lees behind - those tubes/hoses/canes are going to have some amount of gross lees contamination on them.

The "Gross Lees" can quickly ruin your wine. AND the longer you allow those lees to remain in a container, the harder to clean it when it is time to do so. It's hard to separate the idea of re-using a container from the sanitizing process done to the racking equipment.