Too cold for ML?

[Jared Retter]

Making 2 barrels worth at a friends garage, and it is uninsulated and we get cold at night here (Red Mountain, in washington) Thinking without insulation and heat, might as well stabilize with so2 and wait till spring and wait for s02 to drop and then retry ml? Thoughts?

 

[mainshipfred]

Jared, there is another thread discussing SO2 and MLF. The general consensus is you have to be careful of the total SO2. Depending on what strain you are using it appears the highest is 50-60 ppm. It sounds like you have already tried and I assume you are testing and finding no change.

 

[Jared Retter]

Havent tested yet, but with temps 30-50 and not planning on it getting warmer, I assumed it wouldn't happen. CH-16 is Malo I pitched in...

 

[Boatboy24]

That's really cold!

 

[mainshipfred]

This whole SO2/Malo thing has been of interest to me lately so I researched the CH 16. It appears the free SO2 is 30 ppm but something that I never found was they give you a max total of 70 ppm prior to AF. I guess they assume 40 ppm will be bound during AF and the temp range is 62-77. I think most of us have had issues of some kind with MLF. Whether it was ABV, temps, ph, strain selected or SO2 I don't know but my hunch is it's the SO2 levels so again, please be careful you're in a tough situation.

 

[cmason1957]

I think if it were me, I would inoculate the MLB now. Not add any SO2. Be extra diligent in keeping the wine typed up and expect it to take off when the temps warn up in the spring. Or I might hold off on adding the MLB,until spring. This is basically what used to happen back before ml bacteria was discovered and the wine makers just knew something started happening when the temps warmed up.

 

[montanarick]

Gets pretty nippy hear in Montana too. Here's what I did in my garage. Went to local building supply store and got three - 2" rigid, faced insulation board which comes in 4'x8' sheets. I cut the sheets in half (2' width) and taped them together with duck tape and made a front flap using duck tape as well. For my set-up, I also put a center partition in so I could do reds and whites separately. To control temperature on each side of my "incubator" I mounted three ceramic light fixtures to a board, connected an electrical cord and fitted them with 100 watt light bulbs. Inkbird digital temperature controller - one for each side. This allowed me to set my temperature within 1 degree of what I wanted for both primary fermentation and MLF. Best thing about this is that when fermentation is complete, it's very easy to cut the tape with a knife and store the panels out of the way until next year's harvest.

 

[Jared Retter]

Looks great! I have 4 barrels though makes it a bigger project...
My thought was maybe add 20ppm SO2 to get through cold and try to reinoculate with ml when spring hits?
Anyone topping barrels with inert gas? any ideas how long to spray gas into barrel for adequate protection?