Risk to kit of juice bucket MLF

[JBP]

Will be starting 2 Chilean juice buckets later this week and intend to co-inoculate with MLB. I have a LE20 kit (grenache/tannat/shiraz) in process that would normally be sitting in the same area as the new buckets. Is there significant risk of accidental inoculation of the kit with MLB? Do I need to do more than basic sanitization of equipment and area?

Thanks in advance.

 

[cmason1957]

I think if you do maybe a little extra sanitization before you put anything into the wine kit and maybe up your SO2 a little bit you will be fine. I probably would make sure, if doing something to the wine kit and the buckets at the same time, do whatever to the wine kit first.

 

[JBP]

Workflow biosecurity...bringing my day job home.

Extra sanitation I can do (although some might say that is already overkill - never!)

Thanks for the quick response.

 

[Ajmassa]

someone posted about mlf on a kit experiment about a year ago. apparently the malic acid in kit juice is partly natural and partly man made. and apparently the man made malic acid is not capable of converting to lactic for whatever reason. so in the event it did happen in your kit only part of the malic would go thru mlf.

i also remember the person had to really really convince the malo to take. used a high dose of a super strong ML. used the activator and the malo nutient. kept temps up. and did all this right next to the control batch which nothing was added.

i believe the results were he successfully got it go thru mlf. control batch fermented without issue. and the taste was off on the mlf’d wine and he ended up adding tartaric (or acid blend) to bring it back to balance.

 

[JBP]

Good info - hopefully easier to avoid than to encourage!