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Yep, 5 ton. A must have when your fermenting 700 gallons. You have to control the temperatures so they don't get out of hand. Could lead to killing the yeast right in the middle of fermentation. I learned the hard way.
 
Tell them to come by if they are wine drinkers. I'll give them a tour. And a sample of the Chambourcin thats aging in the barrels. Deezil, the dark gray lines are scheduled 80 pvc to just above the tanks. Then transition to rubber red hose to the control valve which opens and closes to your "set" temperature by the controller. BTW these are pictures that are over a year old and were taken as I was setting up the winery. Notice the cranks on the right tanks are not installed as the arms for the lids. The right side tanks I didn't like and sold them soon after I used them a time or two. Really didn't like them. I'll go into that later while we are all sitting around. I bought the German tanks like the one in front, with the full sized jackets. Very nice. I love them. I'm going to be expanding, to larger tanks so I can make larger batches. I'm always running out of wine. We are very happy with our growth.
 
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Deezil, the dark gray lines are scheduled 80 pvc to just above the tanks. Then transition to rubber red hose to the control valve which opens and closes to your "set" temperature by the controller.

Oh, thats pretty nifty!
 
Galen,. First of all nice set up. Maybe you can help a dreamer starting up. My whole concern with getting equipment for a much smaller winery is temp control. What did you do in the beginning or have you always used glycol with jackets? Im considering two rooms......one cooled by means of air conditioner for whites & the other not controlled for reds. I'm talking like 2 50 gal barrels in each. Any suggestions from your experience would be great.
 
That is how we did it. We built a barrel room about 15*30 ft and I ferment whites and rose` in there with temp control at 55-60 and humidity at 60. It has worked very well for us.
Galen,. First of all nice set up. Maybe you can help a dreamer starting up. My whole concern with getting equipment for a much smaller winery is temp control. What did you do in the beginning or have you always used glycol with jackets? Im considering two rooms......one cooled by means of air conditioner for whites & the other not controlled for reds. I'm talking like 2 50 gal barrels in each. Any suggestions from your experience would be great.
 
concern with getting equipment for a much smaller winery is temp control. What did you do in the beginning or have you always used glycol with jackets?
I went the other way and got tanks with glycol jackets. The footprint of the chiller takes up much less room than a dedicated room. Plus the glycol ensures direct cooling of the wine rather than relying on air to conduct the heat away.
The result is more control over the temperature and lower cost to run the chiller rather than the air conditioner unit.

Another benefit is that you can use the same glycol chilling to cold stabilize the wine. I set the chiller for 26F and the thermowell in the tank reaches 28F. Much faster and less costly than a freezer room. Another local winery went the freezer room route and it took weeks to cold stabilize. He finally tried to sell the freezer and get a glycol system.

LIkewise, your glycol system can serve as a warming unit if you buy refrigerated juice and want to get it going faster than letting it slowly come to room temp.

The downside of glycol tanks is that the jacket is not usually positioned uniformly around the tank. This means the is a minimum amount of wine in the tank needed to reach the cooling jacket. For my 1000L tanks, that's about 125 gallons. For my 2000L tanks, that's about 225 gallons to be in contact with the lower jacket.

You'll also want to wrap insulation around the tank. Reflectex stuff at the hardware store is cheap and works.
 

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