Novice Questions on Punch Down

[Jonathan Silberlicht]

I hope someone can answer these basic questions for me. I am making multiple varietals at the same time, so I have 4 buckets with 4 different grapes.
1) Can I use the same punch down tool across all 4 bins without sanitizing it in between if all 4 bins use the same yest? Will this cause any off-flavors? What if they have different yeasts?
2) If I do co-inoculation on my first bucket of wine and use the one punch down tool in all 4 will it spread enough of the MLB tot he other 3 so I don't have to inoculate them? Any concerns with this? I "accidentally" did this last year between my Merlot and Cab buckets and wondered why my Cab went through complete MLF conversion before I even tossed any MLB in it!

Thanks for any words of wisdom.

 

[CDrew]

1) Can I use the same punch down tool across all 4 bins without sanitizing it in between if all 4 bins use the same yest? Will this cause any off-flavors? What if they have different yeasts?
2) If I do co-inoculation on my first bucket of wine and use the one punch down tool in all 4 will it spread enough of the MLB tot he other 3 so I don't have to inoculate them? Any concerns with this? I "accidentally" did this last year between my Merlot and Cab buckets and wondered why my Cab went through complete MLF conversion before I even tossed any MLB in it!

1-Yes, but if they have different yeast, it's best to wash and sanitize between each bucket. If it's the same yeast, it doesn't matter, you won't transfer enough juice to matter.

2-You will for sure transfer MLF bacterial between punch downs. Is that either sufficient or a problem, no one can say but you. I co-inoculate everything, so not really an issue for me. And since there are lots of advantages, and no disadvantages, you could do the same if you like.

Me, I like to keep things separate to the point I have 2 punch down tools, in case I have 2 fermentations going at once.

 

[Boatboy24]

My thinking (not based on anything but my own logic) is that by the time I'm doing punchdowns, the yeast that I want to dominate is dominating and introducing a few cells from a different yeast strain won't have any impact on my end product. As a result, I sanitize my punch down tool once before punchdowns, but not in between batches. MLF would be a different story though.

 

[NorCal]

I could see that in the beginning of fermentation, you would want to clean in-between bins, but as @Boatboy24 said, once fermentation is well underway, that yeast will be the dominate anyway and adding another may just give it a little complexity.

 

[Jonathan Silberlicht]

Thanks all for the great responses! I feel much better about my plan now.

 

[pete1325]

Out of habit I wash/San everything, but at this point I don't think there is any cross contaminating of yeasts to worry about. When we make wine in the fall from grapes it's a free for all with equipment, spoons, cups, paddles, strainers, pumps and never had anything bad happen to effect the end results.

 

[JohnT]

I am not too concerned is a few drops make it from one batch to another and have never really experienced any issues. I suppose that you could make a bucket of K-meta solution and give your tool a dunk in between each batch for peace of mind.