17 years of brewing new to wine

[wineview]

Just use a towel and a piece of cord to tie it on. Bucket lids don't seal and if you do snap it on you need to take if off to measure the SG and stir. A towel is so much easier. I actually bought 1 yard (x 72") of unbleached muslin at Hobby Lobby and cut that up into various size pieces to have as covers for buckets and some smaller pieces to tie on carboy tops when not in use. A plastic lid seal is worthless takes up more space etc. I can fold up my cloth pieces, dip them in sanitizer etc. AND if I do get a lot of foam activity, the cloth suppresses it (breaks the foam bubbles and keeps the foam from over flowing. When I see my cover stained with the wine foam I know what has happened. Rinse it in sanitizer and replace.

I'm thinking of doing this project at a weekend house. If I soaked a cloth with sanitizer, would it be good for about 5 days or would it dry out too quickly? The bucket would be in a basement that is at about 68-70*. I could also place a 6 gallon stainless pot cover loosely over the cloth.

 

[Scooter68]

Doesn't matter if the sanitizer drys up, the reason to use sanitizer is just to make the cloth as clean as the bucket surface, Just part of your overall sanitizing process. I just put it on wet immediately after rinsing it with santiizer.

Unless you have your bucket too full there shouldn't be a problem. Even if foam or your bag with the pulp/slins/fruit in it contacts the cloth the cloth will help contain it and it will be clean. You'll come back to find the cloth stained or wet from the foam but no big deal. Since foam is 99% air/gas the cloth will break the bubbles an allow the gas to escape without bubbling out of the bucket.