Sanitation

Sanitation

Wine is created when wine yeast converts must (grape juice) into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Thus, the whole purpose of making wine is to create the perfect food for micro-organisms. Unfortunately, what is perfect food for wine yeast is also attractive to other organisms commonly found in foods such as the bacteria that make vinegar and yogurt. The only way to make good-tasting wine is to make sure that wine yeast is the only organism that gets a significant chance to eat the food that you prepare for it. That’s where sanitation comes in. To make sure that yeast has the upper hand, you need to clean and sanitize everything that will come in contact with the wine.

Before each item is used, it should first be cleaned of all visible soil or residue and then soaked in sanitizing solution for at least ten minutes. Cleaning is best done with a normal dish cleaning sponge (no scratchy pads please!) and plenty of hot water. Then, when all of the items are clean, fill the fermenter or racking bucket with your hottest tap water and mix in the appropriate amount of sanitizer(Follow the package directions.) Then put all the other items that need to be sanitized into that bucket to soak. These items should soak for at least ten minutes and longer soaking periods will generally not hurt them.

When you are ready to use an item, take it out of the sanitizing solution and rinse it once with very hot tap water. Other sanitizers may not require a rinse—again, follow the manufacturer’s directions.

By the way, if you fail to clean effectively, the worst that can happen is bad-tasting wine. There are no known human pathogens (i.e. bugs that cause disease) that can survive in wine, so you don’t have to worry about poisoning yourself or your friends.