Why Sanitation is Important During the Winemaking Process

Let me start off with this: Sanitation is the most important thing to your success in making a good wine! With that said, what does that all involve. Sanitation is more than cleanliness, though that is just as important.

Winemaking is a messy job. It might be a little help to keep in mind that throughout the process to realize each time that you are working with a food product.

However, which ever way you are preparing your wine, if you wouldn’t consume food in a similar manner, then you probably should not be doing it to your wine. In saying that, you cannot just use any household cleaning product. There are special chemicals and cleaning solutions you will need to invest in. You are going to spend a fair amount of money getting your wine made, not to mention time, so this small investment will be well worth it.

The sanitation cycle will be something that takes place very often throughout your winemaking. Here is another rule of thumb: Sanitize everything before you are about to use it (even if it was sanitized just hours before) and sanitize it just after.

What Needs to Be Sanitized

Here is a list of everything that should be sanitized before, after and during the winemaking process.

• Stoppers/bungs
• Airlocks
• Tubing
• Bottles
• Jars used for laboratory tests
• Hydrometers
• Fermenting containers
• Wine thiefs
• Measuring equipment
• Paddles, rods, spoons, brushes

So pretty much anything that would ever come in contact with the wine.

The Process of Sanitation

You will need to start off with a clean water rinse with a base cleaner, such as a detergent of some kind. The second step is to rinse with clean water, and the third step, to rinse with an acid. If you are cleaning your wine making equipment at the end of the day, you can just finish and leave it with the acid rinse.

However, if you are sanitizing for the immediate use, you will need to do a forth step and rinse with clean water once again. Hot water, if you have the proper chemicals and cleaning agents, is not needed. In fact, it could be dangerous to use hot water as it will cause harmful fumes and gases when mixed with the agents.

There are a lot of sanitation products, but here are three of the best:

• Sodium metabisulfate
• Trisodium phosphate
• Citric Acid

Either of the first two would be good agents as a base. Citric acid, obviously being the third step in sanitation.

DO NOT USE CHLORINE PRODUCTS! Some kits and information online will say it is okay to use bleach or chlorine. But it is hard to completely rinse away and though it is a good sanitizer, this chemical will break down and could cause off odors in your wine. This is how ‘corked’ wine can develop, so better not to use any of it.

Sanitizing in Bulk

If you are doing working with a lot of equipment in one day, you can save a little more of the stockpile of your sanitizing agents by making a batch of them. Get three heavy duty trash cans, about fifteen to twenty gallons and mix up the chemicals. NOT ALL TOGETHER!

In one bucket, mix the base cleaner, another have clean water and the third, your acid. You can leave things soak in the base until you are ready to do the rinse cycle at the end by dipping the equipment in the solutions (the equipment should be dunked and drained at least 5 times).

Whew! I hope you guys are still with me. It sounds like a lot, but as I mentioned before, this is one of the most important steps for making a good wine.

More About Winemaking:

• Shop for Cleaning & Sanitation Products
• Winemaking: A Quick Overview of the Process & Equipment